


Under the sun

by Hashilavalamp



Series: We reap what we sow [6]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, Death, Drug Use, Gen, Historical Hetalia, Illustrated, Nazi Germany, Suicide, Violence, and all the awful things that come with that, mentions of auto-cannibalization, please be aware of this when reading this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7019353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hashilavalamp/pseuds/Hashilavalamp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year 1933 begins with loss, and it can all only go downhill from there. </p><p>They build up an empire, the joined artwork of the young Germany and the old Prussia, but it is an empire built upon the dead. It is not meant to last, and so they watch it rise and crumble, and they are left to deal with the aftermath of their depravity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Enablers

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! This one will be a Two-shot due to length, and as the tags should tell you, this is probably going to be the most brutal installment of the series. The themes this will address are pretty damn serious and I want to portray them appropriately within the limitations of this medium.  
> Anyway, here it is! Feedback would be cool!

23rd March, 1933

“Brown looks terrible on you.”

Ludwig tugs at the collar of his slightly too tight shirt and gives him a forced smile over his shoulder. “It does, indeed. Doesn’t it suit you either.”

Gilbert reluctantly steps next to his brother to see his reflection in the mirror and he cannot help but sneer at the sight that greets him. And for all his flaws, Gilbert had never fallen victim to vanity.

Three years ago this damn uniform had been illegal to wear, and yet here he stands now, dressed in that hideous brown for today’s farce of a debate. His fingers twitch with the desire to rip off the offensive fabric, the desire to choke the one responsible for putting him into such an outfit.  
But uselessly his hands ball into fists with nobody to take his rage out on. His brother doesn’t deserve it, not yet, not yet.

“We’ll have to get used to these, I’m afraid” mutters Ludwig as he grimaces at his mirror image, still pulling at the ill-fitting fabric. “And before you scold me: I don’t like this any more than you do. But we must do what we are told.”  
“It would still be nice if you at least showed- showed something, some more resistance” Gilbert hisses petulantly, picking up the red armband that lies on the table next to the mirror; he has half a mind to throw it out of the window and jump right after it.  
But as much as he hates it, Ludwig is right. Of course he is, Gilbert had raised him to be right after all. They have to bow their head to these mutts who build their empire on false legality and the fickle love of crowds.

He pulls the armband on, reluctantly secures it in its place while his brother does the same. Gilbert’s mirror image stares back at him, defeated and bitter.

“What would I gain from rebellion?” Ludwig says as they turn to look at each other, searching for anything out of place, any sign of rebellion or disrespect. Ludwig’s gaze more scrutinizing, more frantic, because he is regarded with much more lenience than his rebellious brother to the East is. Pretty perfect Aryan boy and his outdated brother. Put that one on the shelf, out of sight and out of mind. “Things are decided” Ludwig says as he fixes Gilbert’s collar. “My resistance as an individual means nothing by this point, and yours will get you locked up if you continue in this manner. …If I may. Voice a concern… You never were in favor of such misdemeanor before, and it worries me that you ask this of me now.”

Gilbert swallows, despondently glaring at the black symbol on his armband. Neither of them has felt quite like themselves since that thing appeared one day, since masses turn to look at it with awe. Makes him sick to just look at it, and it makes him even sicker to know that some part of him is not as resistant as he’d like it to be.

“Our past governments were not so helplessly stupid in their methods. They were legitimated, in one way or another. If you will not speak, then watch them lock me up! Not much left they can do to me anway, is there!” he responds testily and plays with the top button of his outfit, and the other simply sighs as if he were dealing with the tantrum of a child. Ludwig doesn’t really realize how condescending he can be without meaning to. “Brother, I don’t want—“  
“This isn’t about what you want or not, Ludwig. You were not the one who had his government usurped! I have lost my last bit of independence that they would let me have! Do you even understand what that means for me?!” Gilbert spits, overwhelmed by his frustration and nervous electricity. In his tremor, he rushes forward to tightly grab his brother by the front of his shirt and drag him down.  
When did Ludwig become taller than him? When did his scars fade?  
Doesn’t matter, not right now.  
Angrily his brother pulls at his hands to release himself, but Gilbert does not relent, burying his boney fingers deeper in the hated brown fabric.

“Don’t you get it, brother! This debate today, that law— that will be my Putsch, that will be the usurpation of my government! We are in the same boat here, and I frankly feel insulted that you’d think I would honestly try to– try to get rid of you, oh god– You are my brother!” Ludwig exclaims shockingly bluntly, trying to make Gilbert’s finger unfurl to no avail, and Gilbert lets out a laugh tinged with hysteria, voice breaking at the high pitch.  
“It’s not something that is up to you, Luddi. If we don’t find spontaenously find some way to undo this somehow, then you will one day devour me like the others, whether you mean to or not.  
So forgive me that I’m not overjoyed about us being grouped together like this.”

The other’s hands still at these words, guilt flashing across his features at once and a sense of regret tugs at Gilbert’s heart at the sight. A cold bead of sweat runs down his back, leaving a trail of ice; he had broken the rule he had set for himself after that one moment of weakness, had broken the utter taboo of painting Ludwig the killer of his siblings.  
As he’s said himself, this isn’t exactly Ludwig’s fault.

But this is not a mistake he can erase anymore.

The fight leaves his body at once and he lets go of his brother, feeling dizzy and awful and shaky. His fingers tremble pathetically, so he clasps his hands together, but even then he still feels the once foreign sensation of anxiety rattling his bones.

When had he become like this, erratic and frightened?

After a moment of hesitation and with a fair measure of awkwardness, Ludwig reaches out and puts his arms around him in an embrace. As much as Gilbert had shied away from hugs all his life, the short-lived pressure of somebody’s arms around him is soothing this time, so he selfishly leans into the touch. A moment of reprieve from his racing thoughts, from the gaping distance that Gilbert had inadvertently built between them. But it cannot stamp out the nest of the anxious spiders that seem to crawl beneath his skin.  
Ludwig puts his hand on his shoulder when he lets go, his expression pinched in worry despite the miniscule upwards curl of his lips.

“We will make it out of this somehow. The law will only be in effect for four years, and perhaps by then the hearts of the people will have placed their allegiance elsewhere already” he says in a tone that Gilbert knows is supposed to be reassuring, but it rings hollow and naïve in his ears.

They straighten their uniforms one last time before they leave the building and head for the opera. 

.

.

.

“They are illegal, you know. Have been the entire time. Against the constitution.”

“I know, Gilbert. We told Reichskanzler Brüning, and nothing was done. And once the law is passed, they will be legal.”

.

.

.

Their steps echo within the opera hall as they flank the podium, with not even a careless murmur to cover up the sound as everyone’s eyes rest on them for this brief moment.

The air hums with a restless sense of anticipation for what is to come, for the reason of their gathering, and Gilbert feels sick under the weight of their gazes.  
What forces the burn of bile up his throat is not anxiety anymore; it’s the words of protest that clog in his windpipe just before the vocal cords because his tongue refuses to speak them, silencing him. It’s nearly painful; he’d breathe a sigh of relief when the tension finally releases like a cannon in the first traitorous word uttered with that foreign inflection, that is, if the speech didn’t make him clench his jaw in distaste until it hurts.

He does his best not to listen, to not let his eye linger on the dogs of the SA and on the politicians in the ranks who know that this debate is but a farce. Only a few of them sit there with grim expressions alike the one he wears, and only they receive his sympathy in this mess.  
There’s a certain comfort of knowing that they still exist. He almost feels bad for having disliked them once.

Clapping and cheers every once in a while interrupt the speech, and Gilbert takes these moments to break out of his rigid posture to throw a glance over to his brother. Ludwig’s face is a stone-cold mask of indifference, but his eyes betray him as they always have.

The debate drags on as Gilbert’s limbs grow heavy, and the voice of reason among the criminals is met with ridicule, the noise of an entirely twisted nature. But a sentence, loud and true, clearly stands out, immediately sticking to Gilbert’s mind like an ominous mantra, striking his core.

It continues to ricochet in the arena of his skull as that despicable man gives another speech and finally steps down into the drowning sea of cheers. He turns to Ludwig, and Gilbert hates the way his brother falls silent in the presence of that human, and he hates the way the human looks at his brother.

A fanatic glint of fascination and desire, a sense of awe in the face of what he views as the pinnacle of the human race, a dream turned flesh and bone.  
As though he owned him now, a look that nobody before had ever dared to wear in his presence.

Gilbert wishes his brother didn’t look the way he does, perhaps more Slavic, anything to spit on that man with his very appearance, and his eyes drift up to the blood-red banners behind him.

The echo still booms in his ears.

Kein Ermächtigungsgesetz gibt Ihnen die Macht, Ideen, die ewig und unzerstörbar sind, zu vernichten.

.

.

.

November 1936

Things moved quickly from there, as if the country had merely been slumbering in wait for this all along.

Masses are mindless beasts, and that man knows how to rile them up and claims he can control the monster, claims he knows when to rein in and when to feed their hatred, knows the right scapegoats and the right heroes to point at. 

As much distaste Gilbert may have felt over these reckless and foolish methods, he has to admit to himself that he feels the pull as well, first tentative and then like a maelstrom.

It bleeds into everything, each section of administration and personal life, down to every last kindergarten teacher and housewife, the tainted blood of the destroyed democracy that Gilbert had grown to respect once upon a time. Now he steps over its shambles, something he would have celebrated once, and he doesn’t really know what to feel as his sense of self melts and runs through his fingers.

His feelings are starting to blend together, and the time of hardship and freedom seems distant now, but sometimes he recalls that burning hatred of his for what he’s become.  
It’s buried deep within, in a hidden crevice where he had once locked the love for his brother, together with the silent cry of a people that they are abandoning, the ones whose blood oils the machine.

People stop in their tracks to watch him as he strides down the street. It’s no longer with the polite hostility he used to be met with by those who didn’t know him – sickly looking, strangely foreign, red eyes like a demon – because now they see the Nazi uniform he is clad in.  
It’s like the days of old again, when the people had parted like the sea at the sight of Prussian blue and medals.

Now it’s black, no longer brown or blue.

Gilbert looks handsome for once, but Ludwig looks absolutely impeccable in it.

Well of course he does. It was tailored for him.

When a first draft was made for the uniform, they had used Ludwig as their model. Ludwig had given him that uneasy smile, explaining the situation with his body tensing in discomfort at the events, shying away from measure tapes and interested eyes. He still let it happen though, knowing that he is but a poster-boy.  
They wanted uniforms that look good on healthy blond men, so who would be more suited as a model than the nation itself?  
What is more inspiring than the idea of looking like him?

‘But look, brother!’ he had said with a sudden spark of joy in his eyes and tugged at the pant leg of his shorts, revealing the pale skin of his left thigh, and memory of the crashing waves of terror that overcame Gilbert still comes with nausea.  
The last scar had faded.  
Gilbert remembers how when Ludwig was a child, he had sometimes walked with a cane because the left leg was always in danger of falling off. Unwilling flesh had been sewn together through sheer force of will, and when it did fall away, Ludwig had cried and Gilbert had patiently fixed it all.  
But no more.

Germany is whole, and Prussia’s feelings were a horrifying mix of pride and fear.

He should not dwell on that. He should focus on business, on work, on duty.

So Gilbert heads towards the building where his brother and their guests are waiting for him.

Feliciano greets him with a quick hug this time, and Kiku gives him the most reserved greeting he has ever received, but none of that really touches him.  
He no longer feels like a participant despite the awe with which people meet him in the streets, and part of him boils with resentment at that. He’s an observer, as he watches his brother talk to his new allies, all three of them with that glint of hunger in their eyes.  
They are all infested with a parasite that poisons their systems, all of them. Gilbert included.

There are no more spiders left in his heart, nothing crawling under his skin in his waking nightmare. Just a feverish sheen over his eyes, the rushing of pure blood in his ears, and a sun in his chest that makes him kiss his mirror image.

The resentment still screams at him, the words of Wels still clinging to his mind, but it’s so difficult to despise himself or Ludwig when he feels so– like this. So what if it comes at the prize of what makes him sick anyway?  
Maybe that man was right all along—  
No no, he needs to remind himself, it’s the parasite, it’s the parasite, and parasites can’t right—

Gilbert tries his best to smile for the camera when Feliciano insists they take a picture to cement this friendship, but there’s a bad taste in his mouth from his straying thoughts.  
He wonders if that happens to them too. Certainly not Kiku, he’s too dirty now to turn back.

He waits impatiently until the guests have retired for the night to grab Ludwig by the arm and drag him outside from the sheltered warmth of their home into the cold night air.

The heels of their boots are like exploding shells in the empty streets as they walk past the houses decorated with the red banners, swastika glaring down on them like an evil eye, so Gilbert pulls some more at the arm until they tumble down the smaller alleys where it’s only them.  
There is nothing to fear, you cannot kill a nation for disobedience or treason, but still Gilbert’s tongue feels tied when the ears of the other Nazis are around.

“Brother, do you think it is so clever to bring Feliciano into this?” is the first question he asks at Ludwig’s confused look, and in response the German runs his hand over his slicked back hair, licking over his lips in nervousness.  
“He… he has changed, like we have, you must have noticed it too. He may have tried to keep us away from Roderich, I understand that, and he and his brother may not be on our level, but I don’t think he will betray us again” Ludwig assures him, eyes looking inward as he frowns. “No. He is too much of a coward for that, this time that will work in our favor.”

Skepticism still eats through the odd fondness Gilbert feels for their Italian ally, but he is willing to let that rest for now. Let Feliciano aim his bullets at them again if he must: there are more burning questions on Gilbert’s mind, questions that have lied dormant for long and he is afraid that if he doesn’t speak now, he never will.  
When had he become that kind of person, the one who can only speak in the safety of shrouded alleys—

“We really have changed, haven’t we?” he says, his own voice sounding like that of a scared child in their awful meekness, and for the first time in months the disgustingly sunny face Ludwig wears crumbles before his eyes, like a mask that finally falls.

“We have” Ludwig admits in a whisper of resignation.

The words hang in the air, a heavy and absolute verdict.  
image

“You know what they are doing with them. Where they take them.”  
“We both know.”  
“How do you feel about it?”  
“Why don’t you tell me how you feel about it?”

Ludwig’s eyes drill into his challengingly, lines of exhaustion and despair dug into the skin beneath them, and Gilbert grits his teeth.

“It hurts” he admits, trying to put that unfathomable void of fear in his chest into words. The admission sounds childish, and he feels relieved when Ludwig nods in agreement, even if hesitantly.  
As if a sin had been forgiven.

“It hurts, but—“

Gilbert’s words falter and he sees the tired, sad smile of his brother, the glint in his eyes one of fever and love. Ludwig buries his face in his hands for a moment, and then through the gaps of his fingers he speaks with a crooked smile.

“But we just feel too good, don’t we? It just feels so good.”  
“It’s different than it was in 1914.”  
“It’s not even exactly comparable.”  
“How…”  
“Yeah, how…”  
“I don’t really know.”  
“How can we think we are doing anything wrong than those around us when the world applauds us?”

“Parasite or not. It feels like power.”

Gilbert mutters that last part.

But how relieving to know for Gilbert that he is not the only one of them that is turning into a monster before his own eyes. The reverence with which they utter these words is a testament to their corruption, even if there’s still the taint of doubt on it that makes the banners and flags and uniforms look grotesque to him through his cracked lens.  
A part of Gilbert wants to hold on to it, to hold on to that shred of morality, but the words in his head tell him that rejecting it is ultimate morality instead. These doubts will slip away from him just like his self.

They remain in that alley in the face of their depravity, and when Gilbert lifts his head and smells the air, he smells gunpowder.

Not long, and the peace will break.

Soon, please, Gilbert prays.

Let the blood of the enemy and the glory of their victory wash away the doubts and leave them cleansed of the darkness in their hearts. Maybe that is all that he needs to wake up again. Rejuvinate. Clean himself of past failures and defeats and print new ink over it all.

War he knows.  
Killing and dying he knows.  
It is what he is good for, it is the justification for his existence.

The justification for what Ludwig and him have become.

This is the damned course Prussia had always been on, if he thinks about it: the path to destruction in fire and not bureaucracy - all that Gilbert truly regrets in that moment is that he had poisoned Ludwig along with him.


	2. Under the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have tried to handle the subject matter with appropriate sensitivity; I hope that I succeeded. Also people look at the tags of the story for possible triggers.  
> This one will focus on the events of WWII in chronological order, though it will naturally not encompass all of them.

Gilbert had asked God for war, but it is the Führer who will answer instead.   
Gilbert can feel it in his bones.

**29 th September, 1938**

Nobody speaks a word as they wait for the final agreement; somewhere in the background a clock ticks loudly the seconds, the occasional fragment of voices floats over to them, oh, if Gilbert concentrates he bets he can hear the birds sing outside.

What a surreal experience it is, Gilbert thinks as he watches the other men of the room with their bitten-down nails and grim expressions, to be the only party in a state of resigned calmness. The fatigue that has made his being its home makes it a tad difficult to care too much, it once again leaves him in the position of the detached observer, the odd one out.   
The discomfort tingling in his limbs is of a different nature than theirs.

“It’s still a curious sight” he muses out loud eventually, a valiant push against the fog of boredom that has settled in his mind, and immediately three heads snap up at this rude disruption of tense silence.   
Listlessly Gilbert takes a sip from his glass of water and with a loud clack sets it down again. “To see you two as allies, I mean.”

Arthur and Francis both tense for a second and glance at one another as if they themselves only just now recognized what constellation they had ended up in, but the moment of confusion is only fleeting. Their eyes harden when they return to Gilbert.   
“We are able to place our principles before our personal differences. Our goals align, more is not needed” Francis says nonchalantly and brushes a strand of wavy blond hair behind is ear, while Arthur solemnly nods in agreement, the furrowed thick eyebrows nearly shadowing his eyes in his hunched over posture.  
“It helps to have a common foe” the Englishman adds, and it’s not clear whether it is meant as a threat or an accusation.

“A common foe” Gilbert echoes pensively, leaning back in his seat and allowing his gaze to wander. A foe. _Foes._ That’s what they are once more. It’s a curious thing to consider, that they are back in their old allegiances for a war that isn’t yet. France and Britain. Germany and Austria and Italy. One would think they’d learn. Switch it up a little.   
“I was under the impression that you have pledged yourself to peace. Is that not the point of this conference? To maintain that peace? It’s a little harsh of you to paint my brother and I an enemy when there is not even yet a war.”  
“There won’t be any war.”  
“Which makes your attitude all the more absurd, doesn’t it!”

Francis’ eye and his fingers twitch, and Gilbert gives them a tired smile. “Some resentment lingers after all, doesn’t it. No shame in admitting that.”

“It has nothing to do with old quarrels” Arthur remarks snidely, his strident voice piercing the Prussian’s brain matter like needles. Nails on chalkboard. Half-dead parrot, letting out its final hoarse shrieks. “It has _everything_ to do with the attitude of your brother.”

Gilbert involuntarily takes in a sharp breath through his gritted teeth as the other finally addresses the elephant in the room. Or its lack, rather. The too empty space at Gilbert’s side.

In the seat to his side, Feliciano still politely pretends to not be invested in the conversation, but his eyes are wide and look back at him curiously. Only Roderich gracefully feigns sleep, but the corners of his mouth twitch.

Gilbert opens his mouth, but Francis narrows his eyes, speaking before he can get a single word of defense out. “Do not try to tell us you two are no threat, do not even bother. We aren’t blind to the proceedings in Germany.”

Another needle lodged in his brain, Gilbert clicks his tongue in irritation as his gloved fingers dig into the armrest of his chair, his following words dripping with bitter sarcasm. “Oh, because I certainly would have tried to sell you the idea that Ludwig is but a yapping little puppy, and I myself too old and tired to even chase after a stick! It must have slipped my mind, I am incapable of using my brain after all.”   
Francis looks like he’s going to enthusiastically agree with that statement, and the thirst for blood becomes tangible at Gilbert’s conciliatory tone.   
“Arthur. Francis.  Let my brother be my concern. As this conference should tell you, neither of us seeks war. Only the safety of our people.”

He knows that nobody in the room quite buys that statement. Hard to do so when there is that feverish glint in Gilbert’s eyes, visible even in the red of the banners and the once-hated armbands.   
He does fit in, in the end. In his own way.

“He is right, that is why we are here in the first place! We only negotiate the terms now, don’t we?” Feliciano piques up finally with a smile too sweet, and Gilbert feels a pang of glee when he sees the other two nations shift uncomfortably in their seats, because this they cannot argue with, no matter how much they would like to retort something. Their hands are tied by morality and logic. Gilbert is free of such restrictions.  
Despite his remaining doubts, Gilbert thinks it’s convenient that it is now of all times that Feliciano has finally chosen to be a loyal ally.

“We will still keep an eye on the developments. I knew the day I first met him that your brother would cause nothing but trouble for all of us. It is honestly surprising that you would be so defensive of him, when he has caused you so much harm as well” Francis spits with childish spite. “It’s strange indeed” tuts Arthur, like he is Francis’ damn echo. Another needle, and Gilbert is close to strangling them both. He almost wishes his boss would topple the talks and declare war on the whole godforsaken world.  
So he smiles, with all the contempt he carries with him, tone clipped to rein himself in.   
“What is that harm do you speak of? We are closer than ever, I assure you. But I could never hope for you to be able to comprehend that.”

It is true in a sense: Gilbert’s self has been slipping from his grasp more and more often now. When Ludwig speaks sometimes it is as if these are his own words, as if they share the same thoughts. It’s blending together until it isn’t clear where they end and the other begins, or maybe it just feels like that to Gilbert. Gleichschaltung, what a _joy_.   
It has gotten so bad that Prussia cannot even hate it. Can’t hate Germany, who is not at fault for this. As long as he can still remember the few subtle differences between them, all is well.   
Their boss lets him feel their difference in value often enough at least; already evident in how Ludwig sits with the humans right now as a pretty trophy, while he is relegated to sitting with these old pests.  He should be thankful for the reminder.

“If that’s what you say.”

.

.

.

The agreement is signed in the end. No war for them, this time.

The German brothers watch impassively as the other nations and their bosses finally turn to leave, triumphant in their little success for peace. They are so elated and relieved, the humans who lack the wisdom of a nation. _Congrats, congrats._  
On his way out, Arthur briefly lingers in front of Gilbert however, and something that resembles genuine worry reflects in his narrowed green eyes, a near sickening realization.

“Prussia- _Gilbert,_ come on. I remember that you used to be more reasonable than this, even if that damn Francis can’t see that in his anger. I know you. You used to be a man I could trust to bring order so _please_ , try to keep the situation under control, yeah?” he says, and then shuffles onward to return to his boss.

And something clicks in Gilbert’s head, as the needles in it break off

 _We aren’t blind to the proceedings in Germany_ , they had said – 

but they are.

God, God it’s hysterical—so fucking hilarious!, how they strut around toting themselves as peacekeepers of this world and they have no idea, not an inkling of what they are up against.   
They have no idea how deeply the parasite has nested itself into their cores, into everyone, how it has eaten its way through their beings like a hungry maggot who is never sated, _die kleine verdammte Raupe Nimmersatt_ , and now everything inside is rotten.   
They think they know, but how can they if they do not recoil in disgust at the stench of decay? The truth is that they cannot be bothered to look over the edges of their pretty empires and see the world for what it is. They still play with miniature ships and planes in the bath tub.

“Arthur! Know this - you can never appease this! Not ever! One day, the sun will set after all!” Gilbert hears himself shout after Arthur as a strange and yet utterly exquisite exhilaration takes hold of him, the one that he’s felt buzzing somewhere in his ribcage over the past years but never allowed to wash over him (why even, why continue to fight it when he is so tired—)

The look Arthur sends back over his shoulder is so wretched and terrified that Gilbert nearly wonders why, and for just a moment the maggot is satisfied. Ludwig is silent but he thinks he hears Roderich’s snort of amusement further down the line.

They know their boss has no plans to act within the bounds of the agreement, so let these two roaches to the west choke on that damn self-congratulating.

There is only fire and blood that can stop them now.

.

.

.

**23 rd August, 1939**

Another agreement that will not be heeded awaits them.

“I must confess, I’m a little nervous” Ludwig says with a quiet and embarrassed laugh, and keeps tugging at the fabric of his uniform, like an animal that grooms to calm itself in the danger of a predator that it suspects just around the corner.   
“Stop fidgeting like that, will you?” Gilbert reprimands him with an affectionate note to disguise his own nerves, punching his brother‘s arm, right into the eye of the swastika. “The Russian will play along, even if you were to embarrass yourself. And that is all we need.”

Ludwig’s brow crinkles, a relic from his childhood days when he met affection with pure distrust, but his features smooth over and he forces a small little smile as he rubs his arm. “Reassuring. I would simply like to not make a fool of myself in front of that communist.”

“I wish you good luck with that endeavor” Gilbert replies without missing a beat, enjoying this easy bit of banter with his brother. Things have been terse between them sometimes as Gilbert is stretched thin between his conscious and the tempting oblivion of fading completely, making him irritable and unkind towards even family.   
He’s worried sometimes, that Ludwig is so porous, so weak to the opinions of others that he will listen to the traitorous whispers that tell him to turn away from his brother and wait for him to turn to dust.   
But here they still stand, together. _Always_ together now. Welted together in the fire of the depravity that burns in their hearts, poster boys.

Who knew propaganda could be so devastatingly effective on creatures such as them? It should be common sense, but for all nonbelievers they play the living evidence.

The best way for Gilbert to tell that something is wrong, that something has been planted in his head, is the discrepancy between his memories and his self and the bile of self-loathing at night.   
Most of all though it’s the crying in his ears, incessant, always in the back of his mind, but he’s becoming an expert at ignoring the sound and swallowing the guilt becomes easier with each day.

And now off to make a deal with the Russian devil.

“Brother?”

Ludwig ceases in his attempts to shred the sleeve of his uniform and glances at his brother. His face is so pale in his nervousness, Gilbert notes. He looks sick. Like he’s come down with an illnesss overnight.   
“Is there something?” Ludwig queries, tilting his head a bit to the side.

“When we meet him… allow me to shake Ivan—, allow me to shake Russia’s hand in your place. I have known him for much longer than you have, the bad blood between us runs older, and he is closer to what is left of me than he is to you. Let me indulge in this little victory over his pride” Gilbert requests, his voice falling to a conspiratory whisper as they continue to walk through the streets of Moscow with an odd sense of anonymity. It is less about nostalgia and victories than it is because something about the thought of Ludwig shaking hands with that man now upsets him.   
“The Führer has already requested for me to seal the deal with Russia, however I think I can… I can let you do it in my stead.”

Gilbert theatrically grips the front of his uniform and touches his other hand to his forehead, his knees weak. But hear hear, it elicits a snort from Ludwig! “Oh where would I be without your benevolence?” Gilbert says, his tone turning serious with the next sentence. “I do appreciate it. You know how he ignores my input, how he sees me. It’s infuriating, to say the least.”

“I have noticed, yes” Ludwig admits and a scowl touches his features as he finally clasps his hands behind his back in an effort to stop himself from fidgeting.   
“It is unfair. Maybe he believes me a Slav somehow? But if we are both German, if we are one as he claims, then he should have no qualms about me taking your spot occasionally” Gilbert continues, because he knows Ludwig is not yet fully convinced. You need to nudge and prod with Ludwig. He’s still the little brother.

“I will ensure it will be you in my place. It is only, only… You know how much I despise straying from a clear order.”

Gilbert falters for a moment, thinking of Ludwig left trembling after a scolding by his older brother, and so he grimly says “I do.”

Ludwig always took that lesson too much to heart somehow, which Gilbert hadn’t believed possible back in the day. If only he’d done the same with the lesson on personal responsibility. (Important lesson, that one.)

“…Even if you know the cause for disobedience is just?”

“Even then. You taught me well.”

Silence befalls them as they walk and the words are digested by the part of Gilbert that knows something is wrong, and that wonders how they could become so–   
like this.

“I think I will leave for East Prussia as soon as the meeting is over and done with, if you don’t mind. Since we _are_ on a schedule here.”

“I believe that would be appreciated.”

From the corner of his eye, Gilbert sees his brother smile and he shudders when he recognizes it as one of the smiles that he hasn’t worn before the days of the swastika (because before Ludwig had rarely smiled), one that reminds him of himself in his younger days when he couldn’t find enough blood to shed. How scary: he had painted men as nonbelievers just so the strike of the blade would be justified.

“We will meet again in Poland, my brother.”

And Moscow will have them back one day too, just you wait.

.

.

.

Gilbert’s prayers are answered.

.

.

.

**September, 1939**

There has been no formal declaration of war yet, but their troops are already rolling out onto the Polish territory they aim to seize, and Gilbert’s heart beats in his throat at the music of military surrounding him. 

How long had it been since he had last heard it? How long?   
It lulls him into a state of trance as they march from East Prussia on enemy soil to aid their German brethren, or so they say. Gilbert marvels at what their industry has churned out, the incredible machinery, the advanced rifle in his hands that is aching with bullets to dispense.   
The men around him pay him little attention as they head to war, but he can feel their infectious enthusiasm like his own, and he takes just a moment to soak up the feeling, driving back the lead in his mind and body.

His blood sings with their desire to the tune of the songs of the regime, and his being thrums with the anticipation of quick victory and he remembers that this is how it feels to be alive. 

To be _Prussia._  
He bathes in the sensation; what a glorious feeling it is,   
to be loved.

This was it, this was what he had yearned for all these years, this is what he had swallowed everything for. For this feeling. For the glory he had been denied. 

He crushes the voice in his head that tells him this is unjust the same way he crushes hopes and heads.

It doesn’t take long for the killings to commence, even before they meet enemy troops. Everyone, everyone is an enemy now. A young industrialized heart only needs a shallow empty excuse to kill for their nation. Red spills onto the ground and uniforms, red like the banners and his eyes. He fits in here.

Nausea settles in Gilbert’s stomach as he turns a blind eye to the murder, and his eyes widen in horrified surprise when a prayer for their souls leaves his lips.   
_Subhuman_ , whispers the louder voice in his head, the one with the foreign inflection of an Austrian, and why would he waste a prayer on them?

The feeling doesn’t fade until they have their first proper military encounter and the first bullet hits Gilbert, ripping through his flesh with a never-before felt brutality. A primal cry forces its way out of his throat at the white-hot pain in his chest, the noise quickly morphing into sickening gurgles as his lungs fill with blood.   
His vision blurs. He stares down at his hands, covered in his own blood, it stains the front of his uniform and the rifle becomes difficult to grab with how slick his grip is. His body, not quite human not quite _mortal_ , struggles against the loss of the red liquid, trying to mend the wound the enemy bullet left in its wake in his flesh. His hearing has shut down because he is drowning, and so the world spins in the mess that the battle quickly became, and in his bones awakens a deep rage, like a slumbering beast that finally rears its ugly head, so he doesn’t need to think twice anymore.

Prussia is _alive._

_He will show the world that he is alive._

He coughs up as much of the blood as he can, admiring the red patches on the ground for only a second before he takes aim and throws himself into battle with all the pent-up frustrations and loathing, with every ounce of detestation, and a mighty roar of battle as if this were a battle like in the good old days.  
Just that these new fancy weapons are so much more effective than a sword, no matter how skilled the hand is that carries it. 

He almost feels something akin to pity when he descends upon the Polish soldiers, and that even though he doesn’t even see the terror he inflicts.

.

.

.

When the gunfire finally ceases, there are bodies littered about, but he is left no time to feel remorse for it.   
They want to make this war quick and decisive. No time for rest or emotions.  
Isn’t it funny, he thinks, how they all fought to leave that mindset behind after the last Great War and now he has fallen back into its trap? Or maybe he and Ludwig are the only ones who weren’t tricked into sloth and complacency.

Relentlessly they push further inland, their troop grouping up with others on occasion as they more march through skirmishes than fight in them, and Gilbert realizes too late that perhaps, perhaps that is not so great for him.

It’s in the middle of a battle a week later that the exhaustion from nights spent lying awake and over-exerting himself decides to catch up with him, and it hits him like a ton of bricks. Oops. It’s so easy to forget his body has limits.

His legs buckle beneath him when he tries to move forward, and eventually he can barely see, his eyelids drifting shut despite the smell of death all around and the exploding shells and the terrible screams of the fallen. Distressed and angry, Gilbert tries to drag himself onward, but his limbs don’t do what he tells them to. Not for the first time he wishes he were less human when he sinks to his knees in the midst of it all.   
He wishes he were even _less_ of a human.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

The harsh voice drags Gilbert back into the world and he lets out a startled gasp when a young man grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him violently, until his helmet almost falls off. He cannot make out the features of the soldier, but for a moment he looks just like Ludwig, and that is a comfort. An army of Ludwig is what they built.   
“Didn’t get enough rest” he admits, tone joking because it sounds like such a foul excuse for his sorry state, and he waits curiously as this man curses loudly, then rummages through his supplies in the middle of a damn battlefield. Gilbert would reprimand him if he could speak more.

“Take care of yourself the next time and rely on these if you must” the man grumbles and takes out a harmless-looking tablet container, opening to take out a single small white pill, forcing it into Gilbert’s mouth the next moment when he doesn’t open up on his own accord.

“ _Panzerschokolade_ ” the soldier explains like it’s the most precious yet self evident thing in the world. Gilbert’s heard of this. He’s fairly certain it’s among his own supplies even, but he hadn’t paid it much mind so far, not interested in artificial power.   
Maybe he also has simply forgotten between the phases of meltdowns of his self and the bone-deep exhaustion.

With no way to confirm the passage of time, Gilbert doesn’t know how long he sits there on the ground, but he’s fairly certain it’s been a while since he was left behind here with only a corpse as company.  
Certainly.  
And he still feels extremely tired.

The effects only _really_ kick in once the troop pushes further onwards again.

.

.

.

The fever of his people, the parasite in his heart, the drug, they become a cocktail of euphoria for Gilbert and he feels like he’s soaring across these fields like the eagle on his flag; his compassion for the slaughtered innocent dies somewhere along the way, chased away by the poison pumping through his veins. If you asked him, it’s the _gift_ of his mind that seeps into his very nature, this inexplicable joy that floods his system

There is only so much space in his heart.  
His next night is a hazy dream of eagles, guts, and Pervitin. And Ludwig.

He finds the container among his own supplies the next morning.

He doesn’t really remember all that much from the next week beyond blurs of red.

.

.

.

His mind clears up properly around the 20th of the month. He’s no longer with his own men but among new German soldiers. Frantically his mind tries to take advantage of this moment he allows it to reassemble the pieces of memory of the last week.  
They have encircled Warsaw two days ago.

“Brother!”

He twists around at the call and his chest heaves in relief when he lays eyes on his brother. It has been less than a month, but with a sting of excruciating pain to his middle, Gilbert knows that being apart is more than only an emotional effort alone now. His body is lethargic if not fuelled by the not-chocolate.   
Together again, and already his body fights the poison he has fed it on a regular schedule, his kidneys exerting themselves in their efforts to cleanse him, and he feels rejuvenated, like he can finally recover properly from the bullets that found his body.

Ludwig stinks of rotten flesh and ideology, but Gilbert still greets him with a rare embrace to celebrate the quick success of their forces and the absolutely lovely beginning to their campaign to take what they deserve.   
Reclaiming his very own west. They have all but steamrolled their opponent, and soon Warsaw will fall to them just as well.

Ludwig wears that awful smile again.

Gilbert remembers lines of untalented penmanship and an aggressive voice that breathed life into them, and the word subhuman once again flashes in his mind.

The blood washes it away, just like Gilbert’s doubts and morality that he once clung to so fiercely.

.

.

.

The drug has worn off, but the high hasn’t.

It still tingles in his blood, behind his eyes, a constant companion as he marches through the city of Warsaw and his chest swells with uncontainable pride when he breathes the terrible air that has spread through the streets.   
His fingers are deeply buried in the shock of blond hair of a kicking and screaming Poland as he drags him behind himself; for each kick, he pulls particularly harshly on the tresses, though he knows it is to no effect. 

There’s still fight left in that nation, his will not broken yet despite the many gashes that will not close, because these wounds are more severe than physical damage.   
Feliks was always like this, always. He just couldn’t shut up and die.

A group of German soldiers and Soviets have their eyes on them as they parade around like that, and eventually Ludwig stops his brother.   
“This is as good a place as any” he whispers, an eye on the soldiers watching them and some petrified Polish people, and Gilbert relents, letting go of _Poland_.   
No more human names for the others; makes it easier to pretend he’s not a monster when he slits their throats.  
He reminds himself that in this world there will always be winners and losers, and for the winners to taste the sweetness of victory, somebody has to pay the bloody price.   
And that is _fine_ as long as he is the victor.

Ludwig takes out his knife and the blond hair of the Polish man floats to the ground in strands as he is humiliated before the troops, before his face is harshly shoved to the ground. The soldiers laugh at the display, having seen much more brutal scenes than this, hearts already dulled to the violence. Somebody claps lazily, not understanding the gravity of the moment.

When Gilbert tears his face away from the broken body on the ground shedding bitter tears at the mistreatment, he sees Russia approaching them with an easy smile on his lips, a smile that comes nowhere near reaching his cold eyes. Like a fucking dead fish, it’s eerie.   
“This campaign has been very successful! I must say, we cooperate a lot better than I anticipated? I should have just relied on the reputation of German efficiency instead of worrying, as I thought. Fascist pigs or not, you are still my _friends_ Germany and Prussia.”

Ludwig reluctantly steps away from his own trophy of war and comes to stand with his brother and the Russian, flinching when the tall nation puts one arm around him, one around Gilbert.

“I have a feeling this alliance of ours will bear great fruit! Don’t you agree with me? Personally, I am quite looking forward to our future cooperation, my **товарищи**.”  
Gilbert and Ludwig both smile in response, the gesture strained and unnatural, because Russia is the wrong sort of red and his people the wrong kind of human. The disposable kind.  
Subhuman, the voice supplies, like a broken record.

Ivan must know what they’re thinking. He’s purging himself of Germans and Poles at home, quiet and deadly. 

A bit odd to call them _comrades_ then. 

Gilbert tastes bile, and the Russian’s hand rests heavy on his shoulder. In this moment that the glee subsides a little, he hears the screams again, Poland’s angry sobbing entering the cacophony.

Gilbert’s fingers itch for the empty tablet container.

.

.

.

**11 th May, 1940**

“About time you two show up” Roderich grumbles testily as he leans on his rifle, scrutinizing the two of them over the rim of his glasses. “Operation Yellow is already under way, and I have been on my own here the entire time.”

“If only I had known you missed us so dearly, we would have stayed away longer” Gilbert retorts with saccharine, because although it hasn’t been hatred in so long, nothing can make him forget that this man pisses him off with his very disposition; it’s misplaced, he knows, but it’s something to hold on to. Or maybe Ludwig hates him too. Maybe Roderich hates himself too, who knows. He has no idea how much their Austrian brother has already faded.   
“We were held up in the North, brother. We could get there before England could, but only by a few scant hours and the enemy is a bit more persistent than anticipated. Nothing we can’t break in time but for that it required our attention” Ludwig explains, tenderly brushing his fingers with blood under the nails over the fresh laceration on his jaw. It will not fade as quickly as it should.

“One day of delay, Roderich. Bothersome, but you aren’t dead at the side of the road or trampled in a trench, so it can’t have been that bad” Gilbert adds dismissively, seeing that the other has yet no lasting injuries on his person; hardly even blood on his uniform.   
Probably too squeamish nowadays to really get his hands dirty.

“It’s not just that. While you two were dallying around in the East with the great bulk of the army, I had to keep an eye on the French all by myself. They even pushed into our territory at one point! I would simply appreciate it if you acknowledged that I have been having your back.” Roderich sighs dramatically and shifts his weigh a little, placing both his hands on the butt of his rifle, straightening his back defiantly.

“We do appreciate it, brother. But then, it would have been deeply humiliating for you if you had not managed to keep back a few frogs, and then somebody would have had to punish you” says Ludwig with affected cheer, clapping Roderich on the back once and then he moves on, not seeing the spark of fear in Roderich’s eye.   
He already looks further west towards France.

“He has changed” Roderich mutters.

“We all have” Gilbert responds coldly.

.

.

.

**22 nd June, 1940**

The victor’s songs reverberate in the air in the streets of Paris as their red banners fly high, black eye glaring down on any and all that still have resistance left in them, demanding to be bowed to by what they call the inferior brood.

France does not bow, but his eyes are glassy as he looks up to the heavens and his face is set in pained resignation, golden-blond locks cut short with the crude army knife in Ludwig’s hand.   
As always he tries to wear defeat with dignity, but that is hard when you are flanked by two men in uniforms, fabric black as death itself and your country defeated after hardly more than a month.   
“What is it that you really want, Gilbert, Ludwig. Do you want revenge?” the man asks quietly, his voice breaking at the last syllable in his hopelessness and fruitless defiance, and Ludwig fixes him with a almost pitying gaze. “It was you who declared war on me, France. You could have stayed out of this, easily, and instead you forced my hand; it was like breaking a rabbit’s neck for me. You seek war as much as everyone else.” 

Ludwig shudders, twitching from his medicine. “And refrain from calling us by these names. Maybe someday you will be allowed to use them once more, but not now.”

Poland and France and Netherlands and Belgium and Luxembourg and Denmark and Norway are already at their feet.   
It’s so hard to hate yourself when you stand upon a pedestal and look upon the world from above, because since when does the devil take his throne in heaven?  
Then again, Gilbert wonders if not maybe there are thoughts in Ludwig’s brain that he cannot read after all.

France closes his eyes and gives a bitter smile. Plotting revenge for later as always. France is a snake in the tall grass.

.

.

.

The year is going well for them; England gives them trouble, but he too will cave eventually with enough pressure. They can afford a few casualties here and there, they are told this to placate the nations, even if it hurts. Sometimes you must pay your victory with blood too. That is the reality of war. Nobody understands better than Gilbert.  
He’s tasted death more than once.

Nevertheless, things are going exceptionally well! 

Europe has realized who dictates the rules now and collaborators can be found everywhere if you look just closely enough. Feliciano and his brother launch their offense, but it doesn’t take long for them to fall back again because even as loyal allies, they are weak and go to war in cardboard tanks, and Gilbert and Ludwig argue about it.   
The soft underbelly of the Axis powers, the Italians are called by England.

In September they form another solemn pact with the Italian brothers and their friend from Asia anyway. Kiku has been proving himself a ravaging force as he slaughters his way through the Chinese fields, unspeakable in his coldness. Almost worthy, the humans say.   
Almost worthy, Ludwig parrots.

Russia calls, once, twice, three times, but Ludwig doesn’t pick up the phone because the Führer has decided that they will go to war instead.  
And he doesn’t break the rules, not ever.

Something in Gilbert’s rotten heart stirs.

But as so many other things, the dirt that has piled up, Gilbert pays it no more mind than he has to, and he focuses on the glory they reap, the golden joy of their people, the sun’s rays of the promised success that blinds him so much that he does not see the corpses on his path.

Once again he reaches for the sun.

.

.

.

It’s been incredibly easy for Ludwig and him to smile through the persecution, despite the ringing in their ears. Guilt can be so easy to swallow. Easier than their medicine.

Before Gilbert’s eyes flash images of Ludwig as he cheerfully leans over endless plans and lists, over schedules and plots.   
To him the tallies might as well be referring to stones instead of humans, because his enthusiasm for systems has always made him lose sight of the nature of the things he is dealing with.   
Lists, structures, systems, those are the true loves of the German, and Gilbert has the creeping suspicion that this is how the maggot ate its way into Ludwig’s being and subsequently into his own, disguised as the tempting comfort of thoughtlessness that lines and numbers and orders offer. There is no space for guilt between numbers.

There is no remorse; at least, that is what Gilbert thinks until they receive a letter. There’s a new camp, and the officer there wants to demonstrate its effectiveness to them, so they pack their things and head back to Poland with a sense of foreboding dread in their minds.  
But it’s just a camp. They’ve had those before. The Russians have some too. _Everyone_ has them. You can’t be an empire without them, that is an evil you must tolerate. Nothing new.

The officer is gleeful and beaming as he greets them and without delay brings him to the heart of the camp and—

_God—_

The screams in their ears swell to deafening volumes, drowning out every other sound with the wail of despair and such terrifying suffering, and their lungs seize up with the overwhelming searing pain in their chests at the sight. They don’t hear the gunshots, the screams only in their heads. They just see the horror unfold, the twisted reality of what they have built, the blood that stains their souls.

Industrialized killing following strict schedules, but not even Ludwig can stomach the grueling events, which is a step away at least from the abomination he’s presented himself as, a little step on a slippery slope.

After the visit, he never wears black again.  
The uniform collects dust.

They do not speak about the incident or about the other camps that start to sprout from the ground like deadly fungus, even when Gilbert feels they should.   
He realizes he has grown scared of talking to Ludwig when it is not about victory.

.

.

.

**1941**

The tempo of war is ever climbing higher, and that all without Pervitin’s helping hand. Gilbert’s container is empty and he has no prescription, so he remains sober and sick as he marches with the soldiers and pushes his body beyond its limits, relishing in the pain because it drives any more complex thought from his brain.   
He has to sweat out the addiction, thank God.

This time they have set their eyes on the Balkans again; the wars always lead them back there, don’t they? Always on the desperate call of an inadequate ally and due to their benevolence at that, it’s incredibly amusing to find these little parallels between the horrendous past and the gilded present.  
Jealous little Italy who has nothing to back up that fire burning within, starting wars with countries who crush his soldiers like cockroaches and then crying until they decide to take pity on him and lead his campaigns to success – maybe not that one short stint in Africa. But they aren’t talking about that one. That was a _fluke_ , nothing more.

Ludwig is not by his side this time, to their dismay. He’s back in Berlin so he can be admired and fawned upon by the German people and their puppeteer some more, a little reminder of what they are fighting for, that handsome blond man, the pinnacle of creation. He’s such an effective pretty tool of propaganda, another cog in the machine.  
Feliciano’s presence helps Gilbert forget about it for a little while. It is strangely soothing. You could call it an alright substitute; around him you nearly lose sight the severity of all this, all your weariness. The slightly unhinged nature of the smile is just fine by him.

Still, Gilbert always remembers again that he misses his brother dearly, because the physical distance is painful and whenever they are apart, Gilbert starts to feel like a person again - but he doesn’t want the resurfacing doubts anymore, when the guns are silent long enough for the blood to dry. He should have decided to retire when he was presented with the opportunity, but that fucking stubbornness of his made him spit on the idea. He too is like vermin, clinging to existence with every fiber of his being against his own desires;

Cut his head off and he will continue to crawl.

And then that thought is carried away again like driftwood in the flood and he only thinks of Ludwig.

.

.

.

First they crush the will to resist in Greece, and then with brave hearts they proceed to march north, and the rivers run red in their wake.   
They own this soil, and they own these people, and soon they’ll own the world.

Feliciano sings and Romano burns in Africa.

.

.

.

There’s another Red to focus on later into the year, at the height of June when Gilbert cannot yet aid his brother, stuck still in the mire that is the Balkans, though the messages Ludwig sends put him at ease.   
Roderich is there at least, and the Russian giant is mostly bark and no bite ever since his boss has decided to purge his own lines. He is bleeding and half-crazy, sending his people into death traps deliberately and burning his own equipment with no regards for anything, so the German troops have it even easier to embroil the people in grueling battles, encircling them with first tanks and then humans, and while losses occur, he is confident that the Red devil will soon fall to their bullets and shells. A few months at most, then even Russia will topple over.   
Ludwig once muttered that if Russia were not so inferior to him, he would have liked to pursue the friendship further, but all that blooms between them now are flowers feeding on the spilled blood. Flander’s fields will pale in envy.

It makes Gilbert smile to read the words brimming with fanatic pride and unshakeable self-confidence, like it is himself stepping on the insects. 

He has never forgotten the name he was given by Russia.

He’ll soon be back with Ludwig. Moscow will have them back, but they will also have Moscow.

.

.

.

Water is wet. Winter is fucking cold. Really fucking cold.

Gilbert presses his gloved fingers against his aching eyes, the tear fluid seemingly freezing when he keeps his eyes open for too long. Little ice crystals have nestled into his eyelashes and crept onto his stiff clothing and his breath freezes the moment it leaves his cold mouth, like clouds of smoke out of a tired steam engine.   
He’s shaking most pathetically in this merciless cold and he wishes for a moment that this war were over and he could retreat to a warmer climate that is kinder to him, but the voice in his head doesn’t allow that thought to exist for long and the crying in his ears tells him it’s only fair that he suffers. He should view it as a privilege to fight this just war. It’s a privilege, the parasite says. And he listens reluctantly.

“Don’t stop moving, brother” Ludwig calls to him with a faintly worried note, and he even grabs Gilbert by his wrist and tugs him forward as they trudge through the thick blanket of snow. “If you stop, the cold will claim you as its victim. Our bodies are not immune to it, and you will be stuck in an endless loop of dying and regenerating that I would rather not put you through. You told me that. Keep moving.”   
Gilbert bites his cracked and bloody lip and forces his mutilated body to march on, past the strewn-about bodies of their unfortunate people who were simply not equipped for this winter. They cannot drag any of them somewhere more dignified under these circumstances, so they will stay there until the snow melts and the earth reclaims them.

The trek of the brothers is long and arduous, each of them having to pull the other for parts of the journey, and every once in a while they come across some of their scattered soldiers. Instantly the husks of men come alive a little again, life breathed into them, filled anew with the desire to make this man proud of them, to give him anything, to kill and to die for him.   
And then they move onwards.

“Stop that” Gilbert scolds half-heartedly when he sees Ludwig employ his newest nervous tic – chewing on his own fingers, even through the thick gloves on their hands to keep those precious digits from simply falling off. He’s been doing that ever since they’ve been to that camp last year.  
Keeps doing it. Worse since they got another invitation to that deathtrap because it’s ever more efficient now.

Ludwig acts like he didn’t hear it, skin clammy, his gaze clouded with fever.

.

.

.

Kiku loses his mind further, and Ludwig follows. Loyal to a fault.

They declare war on America, even as they are still encased in the ice of Russia, which means that there is now a timer on their campaigns, ticking away to what will either be brilliant success or ultimate demise. Just as it should be, right. Just as it should be.

It ain’t war without any stakes.

.

.

.

**Late summer, 1942**

Hidden deep in the woods of East Prussia, they live in the wolf’s mouth.

“Brother! Brother, look at this!”

Ludwig is a boy again, burning with enthusiasm and cautious with his brother, leans over the map laid out in front of them and excitedly points at the lines marked on the paper. Darker lines for where their borders once lied, in a time that is so distant to Gilbert that he hardly remembers it some days, and then the lighter, fresher ones, drawn in marker. The newly claimed territories, the conquered, the dependents.   
Some minor setbacks.  
Red eyes widen as it oh so slowly dawns on Gilbert, the reason why his brother is like this, giddy and alive, a steady drip of realization in his head until his skull is filled with it. He licks his dry lips and traces the lines with a shaking finger, over and over and over.

It’s true—it’s true.  
This is the most territory they have ever claimed. The most, ever, not just in this war, this is something greater, this is the dream, the dream– 

Prussia is in one piece, no matter what anyone had said in the past. He is no rag rug. He is rich not only in sand and soldiers.

The exhilaration that bursts in his chest is indescribable as he stumbles backwards from the table, his heart pounding and swelling in his pride and the not quite unadulterated happiness until breathing becomes difficult and a little gasp escapes his mouth.   
He needs to press a hand to his mouth to hold back the foreign reverent words bubbling up in his throat, the cheers of a nation and not himself.  
Tears prick hotly in his eyes at the sensation, this overwhelming sea of emotion that swallows him and he is so utterly helplessly drunk that he even hugs Roderich close.

The maggot cheers viciously, victoriously.

Ludwig’s grin stretches from ear to ear as he awkwardly embraces his brother, Gilbert doesn’t even like hugs but he needed this. They laugh as the tension from the last months falls off of them like a heavy cloak that pushed down on their shoulders, and for once Ludwig seems carefree, like his old self. Brotherly affection dictates that Gilbert pinch his brother’s cheek, so he does, and Ludwig gives a mandatory pout before he breaks out smiling again until a tear runs down his cheek.

The wounds in their flesh are forgotten, the exertion and the nightmares a thing of the distant past as they celebrate the expansion of their empire. Who cares if they are sitting in a bunker? It’s their joint empire this time, of the young Germany and the old Prussia.

For a brief breathless moment Gilbert remembers though, the way they have paved this road to victory.   
All the massacres, the systematic persecution and the murder, the intimidation and oppression, the devoured, it all comes back for that moment that there’s a crack in Gilbert’s conscious. The one that has been nurtured there when he called himself Free State of Prussia and that has grown into a little abyss over the years, the place where the bacteria of doubt fester when the propaganda fails.  
Ludwig smells like he bathed in blood.

But it’s so hard to hold on—

So hard to hate—

_When you feel this powerful and this loved, when you are in your blindingly bright prime, when you are_

the pinnacle of creation.

.

.

.

Pride comes right before the fall.

_Herr—_

The world has never been theirs; it just laid in wait for the moment to strike against them.

.

.

.

**1943**

“Stop it, Ludwig. Stop it” Gilbert says, and this time it is not with the tiredness of an older brother who has spoken these words all too often, but with a twisted pleading horror at the sight that presents itself to him in the shape of Ludwig.

Ludwig has changed a bit more than he thought, and he realizes in that heartbeat that they are not one after all. What a bitter delusion it had been. They are so so different now.

“What?” Ludwig replies, innocently, his voice muffled as he pulls his bloodied hand away from his mouth, a red thread still connecting mangled flesh and teeth as more red runs down the back of the hand from the deep gash Ludwig’s jaws have ripped into it.  
One of his fingers is missing, and the evidence of where it has gone is overwhelming. 

Now, does cannibalizing yourself count as a nervous tic?

Even after everything Gilbert has seen and done, he cannot bring himself to touch the hand of his brother now to pull it away from the teeth, the revulsion and worry too sickening to do much at all. He shouldn’t have left Ludwig out of his eyes, but here they are. Here they are.

“I will be fine, brother. I’m sorry, I’m just a little nervous, I’ll stop” the German tries to assure him with displaced embarrassment and the same nervous worry he’d spoken with as a child, then licks over the wounds as if to taste more of the metallic tang of blood, blood has long become the only thing they taste anyway.   
“Just. a little stressed.”

His seemingly unseeing eyes are more red than blue from the fever by this point.

“Alright” Gilbert hears himself say against the urge to throttle his brother for the blatant lies, and his eyes drift over the many lakes of his homeland.This is where they have retreated after all the setbacks and the injuries the Allies and Red Pigs have dug into their bodies within the year, back to the comforting arms of East Prussia. (But not the Wolfsschanze.) The bombs have not reached them here yet.   
Alright. They’re fine here.

This is where they had brought the Duce too, when they saved him, so it was in this house that Feliciano had haunted the other day. Uniform not in tatters and blood streaming down his trembling body all the same as he had grinned through the tears. He will continue to be their friend, of course of course, thank you so much. He’ll close his eyes to the massacres against his people, he is loyal now! and he will serve them until death, even if he must fight his brother now, he does not care–he does not–   
He had to hold on to the doorframe to not collapse, he will fight until the last drop of blood.

That was… yeah, that was just awful.

Gilbert shudders to recall the scene, even if he knows he should be grateful for the support in these trying times, but in the face of Ludwig’s madness that is a tad difficult to appreciate, they’re all crazy.   
The poison finally has come to claim its prize, is all he can think, and he does not want to consider what this will mean for him.

With Ludwig’s weakness, his self is reconstructing.

He bristles at the cold that seeps into his bones.  
This has not been their best year, clearly.

.

.

.

Ludwig’s finger is predictably back the next morning, but there’s already new bite marks covering the skin pale skin. The Pervitin dulls the pain.

“I will head to Russia once more, brother. You will accompany Feliciano back to Italy and support our troops there” the blond man commands once he has his uniform back on and shoulders his rifle, and his eyes are directed at something Gilbert could not hope to see.   
“It should be the other way around. He is closer to what remains of me than he is—“  
“Than he is to me. But does that matter? Are we not one? Doesn’t matter thus if it is me, or you, or Roderich when you two are both versions of me” Ludwig interjects and smiles, his incisor gleaming in the pale light of morning. He looks like he is about to cry.  “It was an order. Things aren’t in our hand anymore, because they never were.”

Gilbert’s fingers twitch and his hands curl into defiant fists, but he swallows the protest has he’s done for a long time now. Who needs personal responsibility when you have orders to console you. He leaves the kitchen and grabs the uniform that sits neatly folded on his bed, staring for a moment at the eagle with its little swastika.   
It’s not his eagle.

But nevertheless he leaves his home and fetches the elusive Italian so that they may face the Allies in the south, while Roderich looks to the west and Ludwig is lost in the woods to the east.

.

.

.

**?? ??? 1944**

They settle into a grim pattern over the following months.

As the Allies and Soviets encroach further and further on the territory they conquered in iron and blood, they fly across the continent to beat the drums of war and to scream their throats raw and hoarse in their efforts to rally their people on the battlefields and to appeal to the citizens in bombed-out cities to hold on to the thought of victory, because this too shall pass, this too shall pass and they’ll pay back the German people for their losses! This too shall pass. And then the world will be theirs, and their empire shall last a thousand years, as it was promised.

Empty promises, but they have to believe in them anyway.

When the duty is done, they retreat back to East Prussia, into the countryside to the little rundown manor that is the only home they know now. Here the air is still and silent as the lakes, not reeking of decomposition, a little haven in the mounting tension in this concert of defeat.   
They do not speak much when they meet there, as Ludwig stays huddled close to his little radio, listening religiously to the people singing their praises and Gilbert wanders the area to commit what he sees so accurately into his memory until he believes he will never forget this beautiful sight anymore. Just in case.

He has the feeling that every time he leaves for another battlefield that he will not find his home standing.

On one day, he drags his battered body down the path through the open plain to the manor and he gives a little smile through the pain and the sweat. The house still stands, even if it is old and full of cracks and could use a little renovation, it still stands strong in this harsh environment. A little sanctuary when everything else falls apart.

Just as he stands outside the door, fumbling with his key because his fingers are stiff and broken, he feels— not hears, _feels_ — the blast of a gun from somewhere close. He hesitates before he eventually pushes the door open, the paranoia of a soldier sitting in his brain like a spider.

Ludwig is sprawled out on the kitchen floor, his blood and bits of his brains splattered over parts of the wall and the kitchen cupboards. The smoking gun lies innocently in his rough hand, as if it has done no wrong. It just did its job.   
And what a job it did. 

You can’t blame a loaded gun. Not for doing its job.

With bated breath Gilbert steps further into the room, his footsteps the only sound to break the deafening silence. The floorboards don’t even creak as he slowly drops to his knees next to the body, his hand trembles as he reaches out to brush his fingers over the hole in the side of Ludwig’s head, the fingertips stained red when he pulls them back.

Well.

The wound is entirely fresh, which means that it will be a little while until Ludwig’s body will have recovered from it enough to return him to the world of the conscious. Their bodies don’t regenerate like they used to, their resources too stretched thin and the faith too weak.      
Red eyes sweep through the kitchen and Gilbert realizes somebody will have to clean up this mess; no good to have such filth in a kitchen. He comes to stand on shaking legs and leaves on his mission to retrieve cleaning supplies. Cleaning is nice and easy menial labor, and the results are incredibly satisfying to see, Gilbert has always found a certain joy in the simple task.

He scrubs vigorously at the stains that have started to soak deep into the wooden floor, humming to the tune of Prussia’s gloria of the good old days, and he wipes the sweat from his brow when he finally admires his handiwork. Nothing is left of the stains, only the corpse remains.   
He stores away the bucket and chemicals in their designated little closet, and then he sits down next to his foolish brother, back leaned against the counter he has propped the corpse up against. His hand seeks the cold one of his brother, and then he waits.

And waits.

.

.

.

“I’m sorry” Ludwig mutters with a raspy voice when his eyes blink open, unfocused but so unbelievably clear for the first time in years.

“I shouldn’t have caused such a mess for you. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“I needed to get my mind clean.”

As if nothing had happened, Ludwig pulls himself up by the edge of the counter, testing out his balance for a moment. He picks up his gun, places it on the cooking surface and stumbles out of the room, only to return a few moments later with his rifle in hand.

Without another word he leaves the house and heads east once again. Gilbert hurries after him, because he will not leave his brother alone again.

.

.

.

But the Führer has different plans for them, so they part eventually once more, losing sight of each other in the chaotic battles that demand more and more tribute with every minute that passes.   
They are nearly on their doorstep now, the Reds, so at least it’s not a long way back home anymore.

Ludwig meanwhile is getting creative.

One time he spins quietly on a thick rope with its noose tight around his neck, his face so infinitely serene. So peaceful as if he could not harm a fly and would never even feel the violent inclination to such brutality. It’s disturbingly beautiful, Gilbert thinks as he cuts through the persistent fibers of the rope. It’s as if it didn’t want to release his brother from the grip of death, as if it knew what this man has done. Saying _“We warned you, but you didn’t listen. Selfish children pay for their sin.”_

Ludwig gasps for air like a fish on land when his heavy body finally drops from its suspension, and he rubs at the angry red marks of death around his neck.

“This is no good” he chokes out.

So he tries something else next time, and then again something different, always when he thinks Gilbert will not find him.

.

.

.

Gilbert likes it best when it’s the gun he decides for because even if it’s messy, it’s predictable, and the cleaning isn’t so bad. Keeps his brother busy when he does not have any other duties to perform.   
Razor blades at his wrists are fine too. Messy as well, but sometimes the blood can be stopped before Germany bleeds out entirely, and then, Gilbert has always had a thing for clean lines too. Disguises the horror through delightful structure, doesn’t it.

Cyanide capsules are worst he discovers, because of the terrible seizures. Like Ludwig is an eel that fights a battle against the elements that it cannot hope to win but holds on to anyway. Gilbert cannot force himself to watch that and waits until the body has stilled and grown cold.

.

.

.

After each attempt, be it by gun or drowning or bleeding himself dry, Gilbert hefts up the broken body and carries it to Ludwig’s room. He cleans up the blood and insides left behind, dabbing a towel with utmost care to the fresh and old wounds later to keep them from getting infected, and then he tucks his brother in.

He pulls the blanket up to Ludwig’s chest and sometimes he sits besides the bed for a while, stroking the blond unkempt hair with care, and sings a lullaby to drown out the radio. He never sang anymore because his voice is too scratchy, too grating, too this and too that. He was always too something but these days he sings for the soul of his little brother. For the good old days.

He almost forgets about the war in these moments, about the machinery that is crawling towards them from east and west and south, about the world that wants and needs them dead.

When he doesn’t share the bed with his brother to ensure he will still be there in the morning, he presses a goodnight kiss to the crown of Ludwig’s head.

How absurd to care so much for a mechanized beast. Germany swallows humans and nations alike, but he cannot help himself. The love for his brother is rotten as everything else inside is, but it’s so much older than this regime.

Gilbert thinks of the days when Ludwig had been young and would cling to his side, and listen with reverence to every word he spoke. No preacher had ever known a heathen more eager to learn.   
The childish joy when he was given attention, the overestimation of such a young nation as he spit into France’s face and claimed to not be afraid, the arrogance when he said with a cheeky grin “But I am your empire”.

Goodnight, Ludwig.

.

.

.

“Give me the fucking gun, Ludwig!”

The force with which the butt of the weapon is bashed against the side of his face leaves Gilbert dizzy and disoriented for the blink of an eye, before his instincts make him throw himself at his brother. A wild and mad attempt to wrestle the gun from his grip, no regard for the pounding in his head from the impact.  
Ludwig puts up a formidable fight despite the wreck that his once strong body has become, and he does not refrain from even biting his opponent when Gilbert lets his arm come too close to his brother’s mouth.

“Get your hands away from me! Please!” Ludwig snarls as he bats his brother’s hands away and tries to get some distance between them again, but Gilbert will not let him.

“Hand me the fucking gun, Ludwig, or I will personally bash your skull in!”

Ludwig flinches first, still Germany under Prussia’s heel for a moment, then squares his shoulders and stubbornly raises his arm as high as he can, to keep the goddamn thing from Gilbert’s reach. Just a few centimeters, Gilbert whose growth and strength was always stunted by the lack of nourishment; it’s a degrading gesture. 

Absolutely degrading.

“How dare you” Gilbert croaks and takes a threatening step forward, but Ludwig does not budge. His eyes are ice-cold and glazed over, because whatever it is that he is trying to purge from his being is too strong for him.   
Gilbert caught him, as he stood in his room again with the gun pointed at his temple, and he has decided he’s had enough. He’s sick of his brother killing himself in every way that he can.

“Brother” Ludwig says through clenched teeth. “ _Back off this instant_. Please.”

“Give me one good reason why I should!” Gilbert counters angrily, letting himself get lost in the feeling of rage because it reminds him that maybe being himself isn’t so bad. “Do you think I enjoy seeing you off yourself every other day? Do you think that’s a fun past time for me, to clean up the blood and drag your sorry ass into bed?”

“It’s– you shouldn’t do that. What I do…” Ludwig retorts tersely, not wavering from his position even when Gilbert grips the front of his uniform. How nostalgic this is.   
“I must do it.”

“Oh, it’s the thoughts, isn’t it? The thoughts you refuse to share with me while claiming that we are one?”

Ludwig doesn’t respond, and that is answer enough.

Gilbert is about to let out a triumphant laugh in the face of such predictability, but he freezes when he catches a single tear running down Ludwig’s cheek in the dim light.

“I have thought about defecting” the German admits in a hushed whisper, his entire being seeming to cave in as these traitorous words are uttered into the room between them.   
“It’s been on my mind for years, but it was never this bad. Before, there was— there were so many voices in my head. And I felt so twisted at first because even though I knew it wasn’t quite right, they made me feel so– you understand, you said it yourself, they made us feel _powerful_ , it just felt so good, so unbelievably _good_ , and that made it easy to endure it all. And then someday I thought that maybe I was wrong all along and that I should stick to my orders for my people to bring them the glory they deserve. But then the doubts came back, when we saw that camp, when we saw what they did there, and it’s left me sick. Ill in the head. I keep dreaming of an end. But we can’t have that! We can’t break away from the rules! If we do, then everything- everything is going to collapse, and if we lose then… I can’t do that. That is not the kind of man I am.  
So I must erase these thoughts from my head, brother.”

A pathetic sob tears from Ludwig’s throat as he puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger before Gilbert can even react.

They deserve nothing but death anyway.

_Herr—_

They deserve death.

_Vergib ihnen nicht—_

Deserved death.

_Denn sie wissen, was sie tun—_

All along, Ludwig had known.

He’s known, but not said a word, not a prayer, not a thing, he clung to the rigid orders like the boy Gilbert had raised him to be.

Gilbert’s senses are clouded by a terrible stench that bites in his eyes, in his mouth, in his nose, and it’s for once not coming from Ludwig. It comes from somewhere outside.

The trembling of the earth in his chest, he slowly walks over to the window to draw aside its curtains. The way stretches on endlessly as the chorus in his ears swells to its climax and his heart flutters in his chest, quivering in the harsh breeze that sneaks through the cracks in the walls. How can it be so cold in— what is it? A glance on the calendar tells him it’s August - too cold for August

Carefully he pulls the curtain aside and peers out onto the fields surrounding his house, and out there stands one lone figure, bright in the dreary day light like a memorial.

It’s a haggard man, a caricature only of the person he used to be. 

The round curves of his face have long given way to harsh edges, the once soft and curly hair matted with grease and dried blood. Ages ago those were friendly eyes, but they are anything but kind as they lie sunken deep into their sockets. The grim expression remains unmoving as he stares ahead through the thin glass pane separating the man and the onlooker in the window.

A good portion of the pale face has become a horrible sight to behold, the expanse of what was snow-white once now ugly and gangrenous.

The stink of burned flesh and of German soldiers fills everything. Bleeding and half-crazy, and yet he still stands.

Russia does not even need to move, not to speak a word.

Gilbert hastily lets go of the curtain again and turns his back to the beast, rather bearing the sight of Ludwig than of their enemy on their threshold. 

Is it the ground or his knees that give in as he tumbles down, feeling the cold wall of his home at his back. He cannot say where the sky is, where heaven or hell waits for him.

He weeps then, like a child, loudly and without shame, his body wracked under the violent sobs and the stinging in his eyes as he wails and cries to his heart’s content. Fear and guilt devour him alive.

The maggot offers no answers.

_Ivan is out there–_

Shaking fingers wrap around the cross at his neck and even if it’s the wrong sort of cross and even though a wiser man had told him not to love the symbol, he kisses his lips to it a hundred times as for the first time in a felt eternity, Gilbert speaks to God. 

_Ivan is there, and he waits for him–_

Rocking back and forth, he prays until his conscious slips from him.

_Lord, forgive them not, for they knew what they were doing.  
_

.

.

.

(They never made it Moscow.)

.

.

.

They need to get back to the frontlines, into the mire of death.

Poland was a century ago, nothing of that glorious luxury of blind triumph left as they struggle to keep the enemy out of their own land, there is just filth and grime and desperation as the Soviets fall upon them like a horde of suicidal locusts. 

The dream and its castles are over. They no longer sit on any thrones.

Gilbert hardly even knows what he is doing anymore with all the fires that need his attention, his arm bleeding profusely as he presses his rifle to his chest and whispers incoherent prayers to all the half-forgotten Gods he’s ever known, in old and dead tongues if he must.   
He’s trapped with three other soldiers, so young that he doubts they have even completed school. He knows they pick them up upon graduation often enough, but in the frenzied scramble for more human resources the crazy humans are fine with sending even boys to their deaths.   
Bullets fly overhead in their little shelter, two of them are crying silently. He does not need to ask where they come from; his heart knows that these are East Prussians cooped up here. He speaks to them anyway, trying to make his voice sound soothing. The tone he should have used with Ludwig when he’d cried as a child.

“I want to go home” one of them states gravely, and Gilbert rubs his shoulder. There is a thought taking shape in his head but he cannot allow himself to think too long about it, he has to take action or the resolution will leave him and then nobody is better off.

“What is your name?”

“It’s, it’s Ulrich, Sir.”

“Where is your home?”

“Does it matter? It’s destroyed. There is nothing to salvage there. My family…” The boy cuts himself off, as if he were about to spill a terrible secret and only at the last second remembered what situation he is in.  
“They fled to the west.”

Gilbert draws a sharp breath, and instantly feels guilty as he sees the young man flinch.

“The other two. What about you.”

Germany, they answer after some prodding and poking, that is where their families have escaped to with no idea what fate will befall their sons and brothers.They’re too young to be husbands.

It’s completely foolhardy, ridiculously risky, and against every rule in place but—

“I will get you out of here.”

Three pairs of eyes widen in panic at his idea because they must think him entirely mad. He is asking them to commit a crime of cowardice, isn’t he? Asking them to abandon the soldier’s destiny.  
He wants to paint glaring targets on their backs.

“I am your nation so if I command something, you _follow_ ” Gilbert says simply, and the boys seem confused and wary, but there is nothing they can do against Gilbert’s pull.

He takes all the bullets aimed at them, and he knows he’s making the wrong decision.

.

.

.

He keeps doing it anyway because Gilbert’s soul is already as dark as it can be.

Taking little groups of his people along, guiding them through what would otherwise be their certain deaths, and he takes them further than that still, to the first convoys of refugees. Their paths are covered with the corpses of those who were too exhausted or injured to make the trip leading all the way to Danzig and beyond. Little crosses of twigs for the children of the nation - those who say women are weak have not seen the soot of death on their faces.  
Gilbert makes a mental note to arrange proper funerals one day.

And then he rushes back to do it all over again.

.

.

.

He runs more than he fights these days, but Ludwig is still throwing himself into the lines of Russians with twisted determination or maybe just an intense desire to die, and Gilbert knows: whichever it is, he needs to be by his side in this witch’s cauldron.

So he ceases his efforts to save his own and joins his brother in an exercise in futility, feeling like a sifter already.   
Ludwig is doing no better, the suffering of his people etched into every line of worry on his face and visible in the gashes in his chest that cannot be inflicted by humans alone.

“Brother?” Ludwig says to him in a short reprieve from the endless shooting, the dirt and smoke in the air shielding them from others for this little while. Something about the tone his brother uses lets Gilbert pause.

“Yes?”

Ludwig slowly twists his body around to face him, and Gilbert feels himself taking a cautious step back at the glint in Ludwig’s eye.   
Maybe it’s just drugs again though, he hopes.  
(He knows Ludwig has a prescription because their boss cannot deny his beloved tool when it comes to such matters. Even now.)

“Have you been helping some of our men escape? Is it true?” he asks calmly, not a hint of accusation or anger in these words, but Gilbert still finds himself swallowing around a lump in his throat. Sweat rolls down the side of his face, cool on the hot skin.   
“Children have no place on this field” he answers, keeping his voice from faltering, and a sorrowful frown takes hold of his brother’s features.

There’s a click, then Gilbert is staring right into the barrel of the rifle in his brother’s hands.

How nostalgic-

“For fuck’s sake— Ludwig, put the damn thing down…!” Gilbert laughs hysterically, not knowing how else to react to this sudden threat of a fucking _gun_ pointed at his head. 

This has to be some joke, some cruel joke—

“I can’t, brother. You know that I cannot let that happen, that I can’t, can’t disobey! After all that you taught me, why did you have to _betray_ me like that? And why– why do you say children have no place here when it was always good enough for _me?_ ” Ludwig spits and swells, and he’s crying again.  
How sad that Ludwig didn’t eat the finger that he needs to pull the trigger today.

“If you will not fight and desert me instead, I will have to shoot you. Rather dead than a traitor, it’s what you would say.”

Gilbert realizes a split moment too late that he will not be able to argue with Ludwig, that this is not negotiable, that this is not something he can prevent anymore.  
Their path ends here.

Ludwig has made up his mind, and he has decided for the rules, no matter how terrible they are and how much it damages himself. Gilbert ought to be brimming with pride.

Gilbert turns on his heel, and the shot rings out.

It hits him right in the back of his head – Ludwig’s aim has always been perfect.

.

.

.

Gilbert awakens with the taste of dirt and metal in his mouth, lying among the corpses of their soldiers and Russians. Sharp smoke still bites in his lungs and distant calls ring unfamiliar in his ears.

His tears of rage taste bitter on his lips.   
Ludwig didn’t even carry him home, didn’t bring him back to shelter, didn’t clean his wounds, didn’t wait for him to wake up again– Gilbert is just an anonymous corpse on the pyre here. Sacrificed as one of millions, no longer alive, no longer anything. Not anything.

Maybe he should be thankful that he was not brought back into the comforting arms of family.

He picks himself up, and without looking back he begins his journey westwards, heart heavy and dead.

Russia is so far away.

Farewell, Ludwig.

.

.

.

He’s just a little ahead of the armies of the Soviets, so he keeps running as fast as his legs can carry him.

Once, he crosses through a village that is as silent as death itself, and he needs to cover his mouth. He understands that every habitant of this quaint little place has killed themselves in fear of what is on the horizon. 

A nation of Ludwig is what they had built.

.

.

.

**May, 1945**

The shelter is crowded, young and old, everyone packed in one tight space. The stone walls are damp and cold, the wooden bench he sits upon is wet and the wood has twisted under the influence of the water, but it’s more than nothing.

There are old men playing skat in some corner with the cards they always bring along, and in another place girls put on a little play for the disinterested and grave crowd, the adults indulging this little attempt at normalcy with affectionate eye rolls. Find some light in this overbearing darkness.

The radio has fallen silent a while ago, and the list of the reported dead has already been read aloud, so there is effectively nothing more to do than wait.

Gilbert sighs, and buries his hands in the pockets of his tattered coat.

.

.

.

**8 th May, 1945**

The sun burns in his eyes when Gilbert finally peels himself out of his little shelter. He’d built it up there himself in an abandoned garage when he first came back to Berlin.     
His instincts scream at him to be careful, to be cautious and wary of everything that moves on the streets, every shadow a hidden enemy that has been waiting for the mouse to leave its hole.

But it’s not just him.

All over the streets, people are poking out of their ruins, pouring outside from days and weeks and years of being cooped up inside, eyes wide as they cannot believe that this day has finally come, their bodies lax as the puppet’s strings are cut. They don’t remember what the sun feels like.

It’s all over.

The war is over, it’s over and done with, it’s

_over._

The screams in Gilbert’s ears are finally silent as the camps empty. That little sun in his chest finally dies in a burst, finally stops searing his flesh - he can only hope the inner decay is halted in its tracks, the little parasite curling up and burying itself deeply to escape.

Finally God, God and not another has heard him.

But the air hums with promise and threat. Soldiers walk on their streets.

.

.

.

He’s crying as he rushes through the streets on aching legs, not stopping even once as he weaves his way through soldiers and citizens. He is needed somewhere.  
He needs to be a good older brother for once in his life and give Ludwig a proper lecture, now that his mind should be free of the fog, free from orders.    
Maybe he can even forget the pain he’s endured at Ludwig’s hands, who knows, they will have to see about that.

He can feel he’s close.

At last he stumbles upon a little square surrounded by suspicious soldiers, and his heart leaps in his chest because—

There he is.

Ludwig, the traitor and the beast.

Ludwig, his beloved brother.

 .

.

.

But he’s not alone.

“What a pleasure it is to see you again, you old Prussian!” America—No, it’s Alfred, no, America– calls enthusiastically, waving with one hand, the other one firmly clutching the collar of Ludwig’s blood-soaked uniform like it’s a dog’s.   
When Gilbert looks more closely, he can tell that Ludwig would not be able to stand on his own two feet if he were not held up by somebody. His glassy eyes are averted, fixed on the ground.

Gilbert feels like he is stepping into the lion’s den as he approaches the group, stunned into silence.   
He knew it. Of course he did.

He shudders when he feels a hand on his shoulder, the fingers digging through the fabric of his clothes into the fragile body beneath. “Hello again, Gilbert” Ivan nearly coos, his breath smelling of smoke and burned bodies. It’s a blessing that from this position, Gilbert cannot see his face, the wounds, the melted skin, the sunken eyes.

Arthur and Francis both glower at him from behind Alfred’s back, their uniforms stained from residue and their heads and fingers bandaged.They could have died.

“Look, we’ve caught your brother for you!” the American chats cheerfully, barely a scratch on him, and to Gilbert’s chagrin shakes Ludwig like he’s but a ragdoll in his grip, and everyone gives a mandatory laugh at the display.   
“Lied unconscious on the streets, almost trampled on him! It gave me a real good scare, if I’m honest.”

“Will you let me talk to him?” Gilbert asks carefully, and is met with puzzled looks and pitying smiles. Look and point, Gilbert asked a stupid question.

“Are you serious? The war has just ended _today, today of all days– the papers aren’t even signed yet_ and you think we’ll give him right back to you, after everything you two have done?” Alfred says incredulously, and shakes his head as if that were the most absurd idea he’s ever heard. He tries to sound chipper, friendly, _boyish_ , but Gilbert hears what he really is. “No no, after this we won’t give him right back to the one who raised our little German friend into a killing machine.”

The burn of the sun and that of the ice in Gilbert’s veins transitions perfect, as the understanding sets in.

“You will occupy Germany.”

“Naturally. That’s to be expected, is it not?” Francis taunts, his smirk probably the most infuriating of all. His hair is starting to grow back. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“They are right” somebody murmurs, and it takes Gilbert a second to match this whisper to the voice of his brother. “We cannot be trusted. We are depraved and must be supervised.”

“See? Even your brother knows!” Alfred says, his grin nearly more infuriating than the attitude he is displaying, and Gilbert cannot help but strain against the hold on his shoulder.   
He will not, does not stand for this accusation, he has not raised Ludwig to be like this, he has not fed him those _lies_ , that wasn’t him, _not his fault—_

The next second, he cannot breathe because Ivan has taken him into a headlock. The Russian disapprovingly clicks his tongue and tugs. “Ah-ah. Don’t be silly now, please. One move and I might just snap your neck. Like a rabbit’s. We still need to decide what to do with _you_.”

“Oh Ivan, as refreshing as your protectiveness is, please do refrain from killing our friend, yes? It doesn’t help your reputation either” Alfred reprimands lightly, shaking Ludwig a little more until the German gives a tiny anxious grunt of protest at the manhandling.   
Ivan stays silent as a grave at the provocation, but his hold loosens a little as if he contemplated letting Gilbert punch Alfred’s face. There is another conflict brewing here already while the guns are still hot, something that has little to do with them. They just happened to be in the way.

If only Ludwig would look at him.

Bitter, Gilbert tries to relax against chokehold to not provoke the wolves in sheep’s clothing. _Liberators_ , ha.

Another laugh fills the air when Alfred accidentally releases his grip on the collar and Ludwig instantly drops the ground like a sack of potatoes, his face hitting the dusty ground with a sickening scrunching sound.  
“God, he’s really completely useless now.” Alfred kicks Ludwig in the side, curious to see what will happen.

Of course, if you scramble his brains by shaking him you can’t expect him to be all there; but Gilbert bites back that comment, because he knows that despite his easy-going tone and smile, Alfred is not to be messed with right now. Never provoke a victor; if Gilbert has learned anything, then it’s that. One wrong word, one wrong word and blood will be spilled. Sometimes any word is already enough.

Sometimes it doesn’t need another reason besides being alive.

Apparently it has taken Gilbert to be the one at the mercy of another victor to understand how Feliks might have felt. Might have.   
Must’ve been worse for him still.

Gilbert’s empathy returns bits by bit.

It’s such a pathetic sight though, Ludwig lying on the ground and not even fighting to lift himself up, not even struggling against the mistreatment, not even trying to gain back some of his dignity. Now he accepts his fate.

It makes Gilbert oddly— _furious._

After everything he’s done, he should at least own up to it instead of simply playing punching bag now. He has slaughtered and oppressed, he has blown his own brains out, has kissed his mirror image, but now he’s a _shell._ He lets Alfred kick him like he’s not a person, lets the others laugh at him, and beyond one glare, Ludwig looks like he’s not even registering it.

He shot his own brother for treason and now plays the dog.

If Ludwig could shoot his own brother, if he could do that— then he should go down a fanatic, not a broken man. Doesn’t matter if Gilbert doesn’t know what he’s been through in the months he has avoided him, that doesn’t matter now.

Ludwig has given up, completely, and Gilbert can’t even scream at him.

“Come on now, Prussian. We’ve got plans for the occupation to discuss and I feel you’ll be a bit more…intelligible than your brother.”

They are wide awake now. The war is over, and Germany has capitulated unconditionally.  


	3. Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MAN I'm glad I managed to finish this. I hope this will be an interesting read for you guys! Feedback would be cool :D

Control Council Law No. 46:

_The Prussian State which from early days has been a bearer of_ _militarism_ _and_ _reaction_ _in_ _Germany_ _has_ [ _de facto_ ](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDe_facto&t=MTU2ZGUxMWEyMjIzN2FjOTExYjI4MWQwYmI3NGMxZGRjMzc0YjZlYyxWSkd2SnBMcw%3D%3D&b=t%3A0EfIagWVEOCbz7eRwU9YSQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fkisamesfacioplegia.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F145934460756%2Fpart-3-forward&m=0) _ceased to exist._

 

**25 th February, 1947**

 

Nobody speaks a word as they wait for the final announcement; somewhere in the background a clock ticks loudly the seconds, the occasional fragment of voices floats over to them, oh, if Gilbert concentrates he bets he can hear the scraping sound of debris being carried away outside.

What a surreal experience it is, Gilbert thinks as he watches the other men of the room with their bandaged fingers and calm expression, to be the only party in a state of quiet despair. They are silent with the fatigue that overcomes a sated beast once it has feasted, and this time it is them who observe and he is the object to their scrutiny. He refuses to let his gaze falter as they stare, even if his chest is hollow with hopelessness.

“It’s still a curious sight” Francis muses aloud eventually, something akin to sympathy sparking in his eyes as he observes the Prussian, shifting his weight a little in his seat and the other nations in the room perk up at the words. “To see you in such a subdued state, I mean.”

The corners of Gilbert’s mouth curl into a crooked smirk as he turns his head to the side, disbelief making him feel funny and much too light, a little like hysteria. Despite his resolution he cannot bear to look at any of them anymore, at their mandatory pitying gazes that mask their triumph.   
“It should be to your liking then that you will not have to endure the sight of me for much longer” he says and despises the bitterness that sneaks into his tone. He had wanted to sound confident, haughty, like his old self, anything that doesn’t make him sound like this shaking mess he has been worn down to. But his fortunes have long left him. Friedrich had had the right idea with his poson.

“Now now, it’s a little early for grave statements like that, right?” Alfred offers with a nervous twitchy smile and forced optimism that Gilbert has no appreciation for. Even the others glare at him; Alfred helplessly looks around the room in a search for support and when he finds none in his allies, his shoulders sag and the smile withers. Nobody pays it any attention.  
They all know it. Pretense at a time like this is simply grotesque, and Gilbert finds a shred of comfort in the knowledge that he has enough shreds of dignity left that his old foes wish to spare him that.

Just a few strokes of a pen negotiated between the other’s bosses, and that will be Prussia’s undoing. He’s fought it with tooth and nail, like a snarling animal in its dying moments, but it has not amounted to anything of course. There’s nothing to fight when the decision is already made. 

Can’t his brain think of something else for the moment? Something not so sickening?

He has never been one for sentimentality but his head swims with memories of the centuries that stick to him like the last bits of peeling leaf gold, and it promises reprieve from the dreariness of this affair.  
So he might as well indulge, relive the glory of the past: his humble beginnings when he denied the old tongue and bore the robes of knights, when his sword was taller than he was, the light of the golden days as it cast a halo onto him – that was it, that was life, that was his time! And when he climbed onto the stage of the leading powers of Europe, rubbing elbows with the old men! When his name was enough to make his enemies shudder!

…The images turn into the bloody days when Europe was an empire of rust and revolution and he stumbled upon that little idea. That tiny crying child that called him brother.  
The first nail in his coffin. The beginning of the countdown that he had so foolishly set off, thinking himself impervious to the insidious nature of death.

–God, not even his memories allow him a second of rest. A second of peace.   
He wishes he had spoken more to his old siblings before they had returned to ashes; what does it feel like to become obsolete?

Is it always so terrifying?

“Why are we even meeting for this?” he asks, more to distract himself from his thoughts than out of an actual interest in an answer. Put his mask back on, ignore the pounding headache and how the others’ voices boom in his ears. Pins and needles. “Are you speculating whether I will turn to dust the second they’ve signed that piece of paper? - because in that case I can spoil the ending for you: that’s not quite how it works. And why did you not invite my brother to my little funeral party?” Gilbert’s gaze drags across the untouched bottles. “Which is incredibly dull by the way.”

Alfred and Ivan both open their mouths to speak, and the two nations glare at one another when they notice that their words clash. Either believes it to be in his authority to answer these questions. Arthur and Francis both instantly avert their eyes as the atmosphere crackles with explosive tension, the Englishman’s eyebrows rising high on his forehead as he sips purposefully loudly from his pretty tea cup.   
Alfred rolls his eyes at the startling sound and makes a flippant hand gesture that signals that for once, he will _let_ Ivan take over the explanations.

Without as much as a glance towards his partner in peace Ivan slowly smiles a predator’s grin, as if his face weren’t terrible enough on the eyes these days.   
“Ludwig is actually with the humans right now, on _my_ order. I believe there is a valuable lesson for him to learn.” Ivan gives a deceptively innocent shrug of his broad shoulders at that. “And as for why we have come together, isn’t it simply the kind thing to do? That is what funerals are for in the end, to pay you our respects and preserve a sentiment of past camaraderie.” His eyes are as cold as the ice of Siberia.

“Now isn’t that touching” Gilbert says and his skin breaks when he bites down on his bottom lip. Sentiment of past camaraderie, respects, what a precious idea that is so devoid of any sincerity. Another farce to add to the parade of them. In this room full of people he is alone, a piece of meat that the spectators have already divided up into little mouthfuls to devour later.

“Don’t taunt him, Ivan” Arthur berates and a look of confusion crosses the once soft and youthful features of the Russian, too big eyes blinking owlishly in their sunken sockets. “Taunt? Is this taunting him? You forget that we were truly comrades once. Had they not turned on me, this world would look very different. You would be the ones cowering. Besides, besides, I was not in favor of the dissolution either way, I would have been fine with reinstating Prussia. I would never lie about this just to mock him.”  
“Naturally you’d be in favor of a left-leaning government that just _happens_ to be in your sphere of influence!” Alfred says, attempting to veil his contempt with a casual conversational tone and he clicks his tongue. “You don’t care about Gilbert, or this country. You merely wish to feed them your own brand of propaganda.”  
Ivan’s smile does not falter for even the blink of an eye, but his posture visibly goes rigid. “Mhm, it is not nice to project yourself onto others and throw around accusations, my American friend.”

“Can you stop making this about yourselves for just one whole fucking second?!”

Everyone’s eyes immediately snap back to Gilbert when he shouts this, curiosity and macabre sympathy reflected in their stares, so Gilbertburies his face in hands to not have to look them in the eyes anymore.

Blissful silence returns.

He is far from forgiveness, but he wishes Ludwig were by his side.   
It’s so awfully pathetic to yearn for the presence of the one who had betrayed him so, to desire support when this is just the logical consequence of his own actions. He demanded that Ludwig take his punishment with the same devotion he dealt it out, and he wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite, would he?

But he is.   
He’s a hypocrite who is so weak that he wishes the little brother that abandoned him to return to him, and a hypocrite who cannot even face his death with the posture of a soldier.  

Gilbert closes his eyes, tears that he refuses to shed gathering at the corners. He can pinpoint the exact moment the last pen sets down its signature.

Prussia is no more.

.

.

.

He fought tooth and nail.

.

.

.

Gilbert’s fingers tremble a little as he ties his necktie and straightens out the wrinkles in the old suit he’s found among his belongings.

A quick glance in the mirror to ensure his appearance is acceptable for the public eye; the band-aids hide all of the smaller cuts and the discoloration from bruises is masked with makeup Francis curiously enough dropped off at his little broken home one day. It’s not out of vanity or because Gilbert thinks his wounds could turn heads, it is because Americans like it nice and clean and if you wish to coax something out from them, you must be presentable. Gilbert’s face had never been welcoming, but it’s not too late to try.

He grabs his walking cane on the way out; might wring out some sympathy points for him, and it does help him walk. His legs still feel like somebody sliced them up in several poor attempts to saw them off, so every step is riddled with anguish. It’s funny how he didn’t even notice this when the war had first ended.  

What a wonderful breath of fresh, dust-polluted air, to be outside. There is nothing for him to do and the Allies still keep him away from Ludwig as bait and punishment, so he’s mostly cooped up in that little apartment these days. Trapped between peeling flower wallpapers and mind-numbing boredom, all that there’s left for you to do is to brew in the stench of your very own guilt and failure.  
But today he has purpose once more and if he succeeds— if they succeed, then at least a future is secured for him.

Gilbert’s limbs tingle with anxious anticipation when he allows himself to entertain that notion, so despite the stabbing pain in his legs he accelerates his pace, straightening his back, ready to soar like the eagle of his own flag.  
Just has to be careful to not fly too close to the sun again, never never again.

But ah, there is the human he is looking for.

“What a long dreadful time it’s been, Gilbert. In my exile I was afraid you would be no more should I ever be able to return, or that they would have twisted you so that I would not recognize you anymore; but my fears didn’t come to pass. For all the trouble you gave me - and there was plenty - your sight is a true relief to me” the old man says with a sigh.

A weak smile blooms of Gilbert’s lips at these words, unable to express his own gladness because if this man had seen him just a year prior he would not speak such warm words. He would stay on the other side of the road and watch with disappointment and pity. But Gilbert does feel glad, happy even. The human is alive and—well, he’s _alive_. That is something. Not something all that many people can say of themselves these days.

Gilbert nearly feels self-conscious in this dirty and worn suit, even if anything else would be wildly inappropriate after such a war. It might be only his former boss, but it is one he was fond of towards the end, and maybe it is nostalgia warping his vision a little but it’s a good feeling to know him back here.   
Particularly considering the agenda they have set for themselves, discussed in a handful of letters.

“Be more careful with your praise. I was still changed. And I remain so, for the time being” he admits, feeling like he owes the other at least a scrap of the despicable truth. To be accepted so readily as somebody he is not would make him feel filthier than he already is. He does remember his virtues even if their purpose was twisted.   
“I never quite understood the nations, but I would suppose that it is to be expected that you change when something of this magnitude occurs. As terrible as it is. We can only hope it will work the other way around as well – and that you stand with me should be testament to your devotion to democracy” the human responds, his tone not one Gilbert can quite decipher, but it’s a small relief the man is willing to excuse it and turn it into something optimistic. How fortunate that the human can’t hear the protest raging in Gilbert’s chest and can’t see how difficult it is to swallow the words engraved in his mind.

Optimism is something they need dearly in times like these. His blood rushes in his ears as anxiety claws at his heart – he wants to believe so badly, so much. He wants this so much so oblivion won’t be able to touch him anymore and so that fucking parasite finally shuts up.

Around them the city is still more rubble than anything; women carrying around debris to clean up the streets, soldiers keeping an eye that lingers too long on the proceedings, the square too big with its missing buildings.

The gray sky stretching above them is too large to comprehend, so wide and empty that Gilbert fears for a ridiculous moment that the void will simply swallow him.  
And that will have been the last of him.

“I hope this will work.”

“No need for hope. We fought these men and their vile ideology, we collected evidence against them, that ought to prove that we are more than dedicated to our constitution and have a right to exist. And I am sure you relentlessly appealed to your brother to keep this sickness from befalling him.”

“I…have.”

“Then we should be able to prevail. Surely the Americans will be reasonable.”

His pulse hammers under his skin, but Gilbert wants to believe in these words so badly. He knows Alfred and he knows Americans, and reasonable is maybe not the first word that comes to mind in relation to them, but the human is right.   
They didn’t _start_ this.

Prussia could be reinstated as an independent government, the chance to go back to how things were before, to how things are _supposed_ to be.

“We will meet another nation there, America himself. You’ll recognize him on first sight – blond, blue eyes, square glasses. He may come across as inappropriately friendly and casual, so be sure to not cringe. He’s our best bet.”

“Is he reasonable?”

.

.

.

Gilbert doesn’t even really remember how that entire affair went down in detail. There’s distant memories buried somewhere but the past two years feel like they happened to somebody else. The images flash by,but never to stay, slipping through his fingers like smoke.

Maybe he’ll recall them once this haze has left his head. Feels like his skull is filled with nothing but cotton.

.

.

.

“What are you doing?”

Casual.

It’s the first words they exchange since Gilbert’s little quarantine was lifted, the first words since that initial meeting back in May when Gilbert had fought against Ivan’s grip to scream and kick at the zombie Ludwig had become – there is _so much_ to say, mountains that have accumulated and piled up since the swastika first stuck to their arms, collected over endless ruminations as he’d held Ludwig’s bleeding body - so much boiling in Gilbert’s heart and making him feel ill with nerves that in the end these are the only words that he can give. Completely inane.   
Trivial, like they are strangers.

Ludwig seems so much smaller when malnourished, with atrophied muscle and without his pretty uniform; it doesn’t help that he’s sat down on a low brick wall lining the side of a street and thus has to look up to his brother through his bangs. There’s still bandages wrapped over raw flesh.

The second Ludwig recognizes who it is that has approached him, his eyes widen and he shrinks further, quickly lowering his head in shame like he did as a child when he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have done. His whole frame shakes, ready to fall apart. Come apart at the seams.

Unspoken words hover between them, coiling around their necks, choking—

“I’m learning to play the guitar.”

Without looking at Gilbert he lifts the instruments in his arms a little and grips around the neck of it to press down on the strings, but the tone that follows is distorted and both of them flinch.  
Ludwig lets out a laugh tinged with embarrassment and a strange undertone of sadness. “It still takes practice.”

Hesitantly Gilbert takes his seat next to his brother and watches his fingers as he tries to adjust their placement, the moment so surreal that he refrains from questioning this. Instead he simply supervises and tries not to think too much.  
It’s been a year.

Ludwig tries again and again to make the instrument obey him and let out a succession of pleasant notes, but it is all to no avail and after a little while he curses and drags his hand away from the strings; the skin of his fingertips is red and raw, deep grooves pressed into the flesh due to the lack of protecting callus.

“You really have only started learning, haven’t you” Gilbert tuts quietly and Ludwig nods obediently. “I thought it would be easier than this, but the strings always cut deep after just a short while. I still need to build up the callus again after I…”

Ludwig trails off, and they both know how the sentence goes on.

_After I ate my own fingers._

Ah. Not a very appetizing topic for their first conversation. Like everyone else the Prussian is plagued by the constant stab of hunger, but for some reason that sensation suddenly dies. He doesn’t even know if Germany ate them all.

For a while they are content to watch the passersby, the few men in their suits, women in plain dress, soldiers with unconcealed suspicion. It’s getting late and yet pairs and loners still drift by carried by the soft breeze.  
Footfalls, rubble crunched underneath heels, chatter.

It’s a beautiful day out today. Gilbert shivers.

“Are we going to talk.”

The past years.   
Chewed fingers and followed orders.   
The house in East Prussia.   
What happened in the months and year they were apart.

The scar from the bullet hole on Gilbert’s forehead.

“No.”

Ludwig’s answer is instantaneous and absolute. Stubbornly the man resumes his practice, his teeth gritted against the sting of strings cutting into his fingers, and Gilbert feels like he was punched in the gut; takes some self-control to not growl and unleash his accusations.

Ludwig cries silently, just sobbing occasionally, a broken hiccup sound that sounds utterly wretched. It makes Gilbert think of dogs left out in the rain and howling for their lost masters.

It’s such a shame, that Ludwig is his Achilles heel.

He reaches out, fingers twitching in his reluctance, then he places his hand on Ludwig’s bowed head and ruffles his hair. Just like back then.   
–Alright if Ludwig will not speak about it. Maybe he needs to build up calluses first before he can. That is acceptable. Gilbert has never asked anything unreasonable of him, has he?

He has always been a good brother, hasn’t he?

“Done already?” he mocks quietly when Ludwig wipes away his tears, and Ludwig attempts to chuckle, but the noise comes out all weird. “What are you even trying to learn to play guitar for?”

“I’m learning it for Alfred.”

Gilbert feels his face pull into a heavy scowl before the words have even fully registered, remembering the way Alfred had dragged Ludwig around by the collar and how Germany had gone from parroting an Austrian to parroting the Americans, but his brother is calm.

“I haven’t eaten in a while. Ivan always seems to have something for me to discuss when they hand out supplies, so by the time I’d be free there is nothing left for me. And then I thought about what you would do.”

Gilbert’s brow furrows. “And playing the guitar was your conclusion?”

Ludwig shakes his head, clinging to his instrument some more. “The conclusion I came to was that under such circumstances you would not exhaust yourself in an exercise in futility, you would come up with a plan to gain access to _their_ resources” Ludwig explains, and for the first time,   
their eyes meet.

The familiarity is heart-wrenching— that, or the knife twisted in his back has reached his heart after all.

Ludwig immediately looks away, and doesn’t look at him again.

“I don’t think wooing them with a serenade will get you far.”

An empty little smile pulls at Ludwig’s lips. “Alfred and Ivan have kept me very busy, but I know them, I know that Alfred tends to be more generous. I will play him a few songs on the guitar to put him into a good mood, and then I will ask for some food from him. I just need to learn to play this damn instrument first…”

The guitar gives another disagreeable sound. Prussia’s legacy.

“Give me the guitar” Gilbert says with a sigh and even if Ludwig blinks in confusion, he slowly hands over the instrument. Under closer inspection it’s obvious that it’s been a while since it was properly maintained, but it should still be fine to play it; somebody at least tuned it properly before they let Ludwig have it.

“I have always been a faster learner than you and I have a penchant for musical instruments. Most importantly though… I still have calluses.”

No more talking, just begging for forgiveness through quiet notes.

.

.

.

“Isn’t it heartwarming to see you two together once more, playing such nice songs! It always takes me by surprise when I’m reminded that you can produce something so pleasant too. Do y’think you can play– well, you probably can’t yet. Anyway, take these sandwiches. I didn’t want them anymore anyway.”

.

.

.

There was something precious about these evenings, something fragile. And neither of them has ever been known to be tender.

.

.

.

**26 th February, 1947**

 

He can’t sleep.

Hours have trickled by since he threw himself onto his bed and entangled himself in the sheets, pulling the rough fabric over his face and nearly suffocating himself with it. Even if none of them touched the alcohol Ivan took along to the funeral, Gilbert feels nauseous and numbed.  
In the darkness of his room his only company has been his own heart beat and the relentless onslaught of thoughts, of fragments of memories and reminders of his deeds. A merciless maelstrom that pulls at his sanity, tearing it away bit by bit until he is left raw and bleeding, a pathetic bundle that does not deserve the name of Prussia.

_Oh, but Prussia doesn’t exist anymore._

What would Old Man Fritz think, could he see him right now? What judgement would he pass? Would he blame the others for their cruelty, or would he turn his back on him, the one he had entrusted his beloved kingdom to and who subsequently drove it to ruins? Would Friedrich’s spite turn towards him in the end?  
Prior to this day Gilbert had always found comfort in the idea that maybe the blame could still be put onto somebody else. But now?

He had never been a man who accepted the limitations of reality, he had always blurred delusions and truth until they were one and the same, but he cannot run any longer from his own responsibility - this is not a wall he can force his way through with sheer stubbornness. The darkness, a place he thought he could always find refugee and even peace in, has become his prison. Like the tunnel you pass just before you reach the heaven’s gates, it forces him to revisit all these times that he said the wrong thing, encouraged the wrong trait, shared the wrong wisdom, was too harsh—

_“It was I who crushed that Danish fool, and Germany knows to admire that. He knows that true power lies in military, not marriage.”_

He had pushed the child nation through training with the human soldiers no matter the weather, unmoved by tears of exhaustion until little Ludwig collapsed, and only then he’d relent. And then he’d wait until he recovered to do it all over again.   
There were always books left to read, weapons to master.

_“What did I tell you was a value you’d do well to remember!”  
“…Obedience.”_

The other empires would know no more mercy than him, so it was his duty to raise a man who would be filled to the brim with determination and the heart to fight until his last breath. A proper soldier, an invincible force so Ludwig would never have to know fear; just how Gilbert had grown, but raised by family and not wolves. It’s kinder to grow up with a brother.

_“You taught me well.”_

When Ludwig’s limbs would not attach themselves to the body, Gilbert had patiently sewn them all back on, enduring Ludwig’s screams of pain that grew muffled through ether. Ludwig accused him of lacking morals back then in a flare of temper, and Gilbert had replied that he lives by strict principles - but he knows when such things can be a hindrance on the path to a greater goal.

_–he clung to the rigid orders like the boy Gilbert had raised him to be_

But hadn’t he tried to teach Ludwig to be a leader? Hadn’t he tried to raise a man who knows what is best and doesn’t act out of a sheer desire for approval, who differentiates between order and madness?

_“ And I felt so twisted at first because even though I knew it wasn’t quite right, they made me feel so– you understand, you said it yourself, they made us feel _powerful_ , it just felt so good, so unbelievably _good_ ”_

Ludwig had known, so clearly Gilbert hadn’t fail completely, but—

Ludwig did not come see him today after everything was said and done.

Does he blame him too?

Does he too try to force the blame onto another so he will not have to carry that burden? Does he avoid him now so Gilbert cannot remind him that they killed together and sang the praises in unison, that they both bowed to that man? That Ludwig was always quicker to cave in?

Is that why he never speaks of what transpired? He always says what a terrible person he is, but does he know who is the true evil here?

Gilbert needs answers before he dies, and so his thoughts keep racing.

.

.

.

At the break of dawn, the former Prussian throws back the covers and steps out of bed, driven by a nearly sadistic desire. Without a moment wasted on admiring the morning light or gathering his scattered thoughts, he puts together an outfit for the day, careful to not rip the fabric in his haste. He nearly forgets his cane as he rushes out the door, but thankfully the excruciating pain creeping up his leg reminds him.

His feet barely seem to hit the boards of the stairs, but the stairwell echoes with the loud noise in the tranquil morning hours. His neighbors will leave notes of complaint for all of this later, but what does that matter? Not like he will live here much longer.

With burning purpose Gilbert weaves his way through the streets, past ruins and empty lots that once housed life but crumble in neglect, walks even further until he reaches houses that were mostly spared by the bombs or already repaired enough to look like homes.   
Alfred recently offered this place to Ludwig as if it were his to give in the first place and Gilbert has not had the opportunity to visit often, what’s with his impeding execution so to speak. Keeps a man busy and all. Still he recognizes the house and his finger presses down on the bell button next to the fresh plaque that reads ‘Beilschmidt’, immediately pushing his way into the house the second he hears the buzz and the door yields.

Ludwig lives on the second floor and if Gilbert were not half-crazy right now that would have posed an issue with his messed up legs. (How does it feel for Ludwig each morning?) But the way things are, he climbs the stairs with ease and does not even need to catch his breath and wheeze when he reaches his brother’s threshold.

So early in the morning and already Ludwig is impeccably dressed. His suit is clean and new, his face washed, wounds hidden as much as you can hide them, and his hair carefully styled. Just for a second Gilbert sees him in his black uniform. 

“Brother, why…”

Ignoring the guilt-addled question, the man strides right past Ludwig into the apartment. It’s pretty bare still but the wallpaper is fresh; nothing is peeling off, nothing in here is broken and out of place anymore. Ludwig has made a little home for himself and himself alone.

“Nice of you to come visit me, brother! Why yes! I apologize that I have acted dismissive and didn’t even try to speak to you yesterday even though that must have been a terrible ordeal for you!” Gilbert exclaims, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can think, shrill and piercing even to him.   
Ludwig freezes in the doorframe, hunching his shoulders, lowering his head—

“Look at me at least!”

Ludwig’s head snaps back up at the command, his eyes wide and strangely fearful when they meet his red ones; his mouth is pressed into a thin line as if he were holding something back, something not as subdued as the words that follow.

“–I am sorry, brother.”

_“Are you?”_

Gilbert gets out the verbal sledgehammer to break in the walls that Ludwig builds to hide behind. With enough hits, it will simply have to crumble. Gilbert watches the webs of cracks with bated breath, the rise and fall of Ludwig’s chest, and the mortar trickles. _  
_

“Of course I am! Do you think it doesn’t hurt me too?! None of this was supposed to happen, but— the decisions are not up to me anymore” Ludwig admits with comforting sincerity, and finally he closes the door to grant them a little bit of privacy.  
Shouting is still ill-advised probably, but as long as there is the pretense that they are on their own, that is fine with Gilbert.

Leaving Ludwig without an answer, Gilbert inspects the apartment a little more, peeking through doors left ajar to scout of the place. All is kept nice and neat, and so dead. He discovers Ludwig’s room tucked away in the back of it all. It has a feeling of intrusion to it in a way, even though Gilbert had never felt like a stranger in Ludwig’s sphere before.  
The bedroom is as bare as the rest, though the existing furnishing is obviously intact and new.

“Ludwig.”

In the middle of the room, Gilbert turns around to face his brother. His Achilles heel.

“We’re going to talk about it.”

Ludwig’s facial expression remains nearly impassive to the untrained eye, but Gilbert notices the way his eyes narrow and his jaw clenches.

“No.”

Such an absolute answer.

“Yes we are, Ludwig. How would you say? The decisions are no longer up to you. We are going to talk.”

“Neither are the decisions yours to make” Ludwig immediately bites back, that temper of his breaking through the mask of disgusting passiveness he wears around the Allies. “There is nothing we could discuss when everything is already clear. There are mountains of evidence for how brutally I have wronged the world and you. I just need to look outside the window to know what I’ve done.”

Gilbert knows this tactic well, trying to disarm your opponent by readily admitting to everything in the hopes that it will keep the other from trying to pry further, but he’s not one to fall for such tricks, tricks he taught Ludwig himself.  
In frustration he pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. Bastard thinks he can get out of this just like that.

“Do you know that soon it will have been two years? Two years of nothing but silence! I think I’ve given you enough time! I get it, nobody wants to talk about how they shot their brother but– Ludwig, you didn’t even come to me when I had just had my state taken away from me, even when you too must feel the repercussions of that— I think you owe me this much! You owe it to me to talk about this!” Gilbert growls, not letting himself be intimidated when Ludwig takes a warning step forward; Ludwig will not do anything because horror flashes in these blue eyes. Words can be so much more effective than a slap when Ludwig is concerned, and the cracks widen.

Defeated, Ludwig relaxes his posture just the slightest bit, keeping his sharp gaze lowered as he awaits his trial at the hands of his brother.

And now that Gilbert finds himself in the role of judge and jury and executioner all in one, in a moment in which Ludwig is vulnerable and cannot deflect him, when he can finally pour out his heart—   
the words just fail him all over. 

Panic rises in his chest like a toxic gas and to calm himself he tightly grips his walking cane like it is a weapon, dragging it close to his chest as he wracks his brain for something to say.

There’s got to be something—

“Why did you leave me lying there?”

In the end, that was probably the most pressing concern on his mind and Ludwig flinches visibly, looking as if he took offense to this question. But it must be hard to take, Gilbert couldn’t even say it in German.

“I didn’t leave you lying there. I couldn’t get back to you.”

“Couldn’t, or just wouldn’t, Ludwig? Did you maybe just not want to give your traitor brother that honor?! I can take the truth you know—”

“ _Halt den Mund, Gilbert_!” Ludwig shouts, cradling his head in his hands and Gilbert is so taken aback by hearing his name that his mouth automatically snaps shut, eyes trained on his brother who seems to be shaking all of a sudden. Ludwig had rarely ever called him by his name, and Gilbert hasn’t heard it in years.  
“Just shut– That is not how it went at all. Nothing made sense anymore, nothing still made sense but I couldn’t stay there all day–” Ludwig takes one of his hands away from his face and runs the other over his hair, revealing the desperate smile on his face. “Ivan found me. That’s when I last bit off a finger, and before you ask: he found a labor camp to fit me in anyway.”

“I didn’t—“

“It’s really different on the other side…! I don’t quite remember how I ended up making it out of there; maybe Ivan thought it’s more entertaining to see me run a little or maybe it helps that bullets are only lethal for periods of time, doesn’t matter. Nothing really stuck with me for those months, so there’s that—!”

Gilbert still clings to his cane, a sense of shame crawling up his spine for all the accusations he’s formulated in his head on the way here, when in the end, at least that was not Ludwig’s fault. He remembers the rumors of what fate awaits those captured by Russians, he himself had only narrowly avoided it, and the memory of what the Russians did on German soil is dug so deep. Gilbert doesn’t want to imagine Ludwig in that hell, even if the rage in his chest is far from quelled.  
Ludwig meanwhile grits his teeth, likely lost in the memories of that time as he begins to lightly scratch at his wrists.

“Could have told me that instead of letting me believe that you didn’t think me deserving of getting dragged from the battlefield.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it, it was all just logical consequence of my actions. I’m done with it now. So if you please…”

“ _Done_ with it? Is that you verdict over it all? Over everything that happened? Seriously?”

“Seriously” Ludwig hisses, his nails leaving little pink crescents on his wrists.

Gilbert’s guilt shrivels up and he substitutes a scream of frustration and anger with hitting the ground with his cane. “Is that why you still walk around looking like a damn Nazi?!”

With a disgusted expression Ludwig stares at him, the forbidden word finally entering the room with a bang, and Ludwig touches his slicked back hair, knowing exactly what Gilbert is alluding to. A look of terror ghosts across his features. “I’ve always worn my hair like this, it has absolutely _nothing_ to do with Nazis. And you can’t blame me for my _face_.”

With these words Ludwig stomps towards the desk behind Gilbert and forcefully pulls out one of its drawers, rummaging through its contents until he pulls out a piece of paper. Wordlessly he shoves it right into his brother’s face until its taken from his hands.

“I got my _Persilschein_ just like you did. That’s all to be said on this topic. I’m officially denazified, to use the terminology of the Potsdam conference, so yes, it’s done. I take full responsibility for the atrocities I committed and will help move us all forward. That’s all we can do.”

Gilbert still stares at the ticket in his hands, the black letters proclaiming indeed that Ludwig ‘Beilschmidt’ is no war criminal and is therefore _clean_. Hard to imagine when even the dead man is still full of that filth.

“There’s a whole lot more you could do” Gilbert murmurs as he hands Ludwig the ticket back and Ludwig’s grip is so tight that the worthless paper crumples in his hands. “You could stop lying to me. Pretending like none of this happened isn’t going to change anything, the system you’re working with will remain as utterly rotten as we are!”

“I know.”

Ludwig’s knuckles show white, but he has himself enough under control to put it back in his drawer instead of ripping the thin paper in his large and rough hands.

“Of course I know that. But what am I supposed to do, brother? Tell me, please, tell me because I cannot think of anything! There is nothing to do, Ivan and Alfred are starting to realize how completely impossible denazification is! If they remove everyone involved with the regime there won’t be a nation left, because everyone was to some degree complicit in this! We all have blood on our hands and we can never wash it off! Least of all when I allowed these ideas in! You can feel it too, I know it, that parasite we carry in us, can hear what it whispers to us! It will never die, because ideologies simply do _not_ die! They fester and make us their homes and we will never ever get them out again!   
I can no longer be trusted, and even if America and the Soviets cannot be trusted either, they are my best bet! What else can I hope for!  
I can only hope the parasite stays dormant and never rises to the surface again, I can only try to move on from it and hope that one day I won’t be the person I am anymore! I can only hope that the person I was will be dead!”

For a split moment Ludwig’s blue eyes are once again clouded by that glassy sheen of fanaticism and his chest is heaving from the effort I must have taken to get these words out. His broad frame trembles like he’s just a tiny leaf holding on to its branch with all its might against the storm; powerless he sinks to the ground. The wall caves, and Ludwig hides his tears and sobs behind his hands.

As much as Gilbert wants to keep raving and shouting at his brother, as much as he wants to spit vitriol because all of this is so wrong and unfair and he hates to see his brother like this—   
he stays silent instead.

Fragile like brittle china, Gilbert crouches down to reach out, to touch, but Ludwig shies from the touch.

The words Wels once spoke on that fateful day in 1933 were a double edged sword. Ideas don’t die so easily.

“If you may excuse me, I need to leave. Alfred must already be waiting for me, and there’s another meeting with Ivan scheduled as well that will now be delayed” Ludwig says once he’s done, even though he doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to go anywhere. And still he stumbles towards the door until Gilbert stretches out his hand and grabs Ludwig by the sleeve of his suit.

“I can meet with Ivan in your stead. I am sure you remember what I told you.” It feels like it’s not him speaking these words, like his tongue is working against him, but he can’t be angry at anyone when a look of pure relief and pity crosses Ludwig’s features.

“You don’t hate me?” he asks, hopeful.

Hate? 

Does he hate Ludwig?

How– absurd that this was never a possibility that ever occurred to Gilbert, not even in the deepest pits of his despair.

“I have never hated you. And hey, I’m officially dead now. Might as well use the time I have left to irritate Ivan a little. I haven’t lost that skill” Gilbert responds hesitantly, trying to show his likeable self (the one Ludwig liked, anyway) again and not the bitter mess he’s turned into.

There’s a selfish desire mixed in there as well, he thinks, even as Ludwig smiles shakily and mutters apologies on his way out.

The trouble is: even if there is a truth in Ludwig’s words, Gilbert can’t move on to anything. 

He can only look back on the past and see his mistakes, there is no future for him. All that is left for him is to hold on to existence and relevance for as long as he can. Like vermin.   
Or like an old man who refuses to acknowledge that his time has come and gone, whose bitterness keeps him anchored in this world.

.

.

.

“Oh? Gilbert? Where have you left your brother? It was him who was meant to meet with me, yes. I don’t recall asking for you” Ivan greets him, his eyes crinkling in genuine amusement as he walks towards Gilbert, his arms wide open like a false prophet.

Gilbert stands perfectly straight and his face is stone-cold mask as he fixes his red eyes on the approaching Russian, trying not to wince or flinch at the sense of dread twisting his insides.

“I am afraid you will have to be content dealing with me. From this day on, I will be the one to turn to in matters concerning your zone of occupation as a representative sent by Germany. I look forward to working with you.”

It feels like they are back in the East, Gilbert peeking out through the curtains of his home and spotting the unwavering beast of Russia lurking just outside. Waiting patiently until he presents himself as the meal. Always waiting for him.

Ivan smiles.

“Welcome to the family.”


End file.
